[Zope3-dev] Re: .xpt extension for explicit xml processing

[Fred Drake]

On 10/14/05, Tonico Strasser <contact_tonico at yahoo.de> wrote:
> HTML mode is still useful for user agents that use a SGML parser instead
> of a XML parser and would break if they had to deal with real XML code.
> I know, such user agents are very rare, Netscape 4 comes into my mind.
> (If you want to make Netscape 4 burn just put a <br/> somewhere in the
> source).
>
> Why does HTML mode help? It converts <foo/> to <foo />.

We can make the XML mode do this as well, though, and would need to in
order to have modeless output.

Where you want a "real" SGML parser to handle the document, the slash
isn't acceptable.  <foo/> isn't accepted for empty elements by most
SGML parsers, that's new syntax for XML.  The W3C HTML validator, for
example, won't accept it.

Using the XHTML backward-compatibility guidelines does not provide for
valid HTML; those are designed for happy browsers, not valid HTML.

> MSIE is known to handle XHTML pretty well althought it doesn't use a XML
> parser. IE can deal with <br/> but it can't deal with <script/>. You
> have to write <script></script> for IE.

Yes, which seems like it is a case that might need special handling,
since we want that to be automatic.  Since for XML <script/>, <script
/>, and <script></script> are semantically identical, I don't see a
problem with that.

>  From this information I come to the conclusion that it would be best to
> simply follow the compatibility guidlines in appendix C. HTML mode helps
> me to do this by inserting a space before the closing slash.

I suspect the right thing is to make sure XML mode supports the XHTML
recommendations, since those are designed to be entirely
XML-acceptable.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.    <fdrake at gmail.com>
"Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless." --B.F. Skinner