[whatwg] Should ambiguous ampersand be a parse error?

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 10 Dec 2013, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> > > 
> > > Allowing user agents to stop parsing after a parse error (BTW, where 
> > > exactly does the WHATWG HTML Living Standard allow that?)
> > 
> > Did you try following the links in my mail?  Let me try again, but 
> > this time do actually follow the link: 
> > http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/parsing.html#parse-error
> 
> “This section only applies to user agents, data mining tools, and 
> conformance checkers.” So what about conformance of documents?

As bz pointed out, you had asked about conformance of user agents, not 
documents. For what it's worth, though, conformance of documents is given 
in an earlier section:

   http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/syntax.html#writing


> If browsers are allowed to quit, or to proceed, then this is a very 
> theoretic proposition. Technically, it does not define document 
> conformance, does it?

The term "parse error" defines where conformance checkers are to report 
conformance errors, but you are correct that technically the conformance 
requirements are in a different section (the one cited above). This only 
applies to syntax conformance requirements, and was done this way to make 
conformance implementors easier to write. For other conformance 
requirements (e.g. content models), conformance checkers are required to 
check the actual conformance requirements.

If you find any conflicts between the syntax section's requirements on 
documents and the parser section's requirements on conformance checkers, 
please do bring them to my attention, they are unintentional. (The risk of 
the existence of such mistakes is the cost of speccing things in this 
admittedly unusual manner.)

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'