Subject: Re: If you want "Fat Pings" just use Atom!

From: "A. Pagaltzis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 01:34:22 +0200

* Henri Sivonen <[email-masked]> [2005-08-23 08:45]:
> On Aug 23, 2005, at 07:27, A. Pagaltzis wrote:
> > I still dislike the idea of a “virtual closing tag” – it
> > ain’t 1995 anymore, after all.
> 
> You seem to be thinking that an XML parser needs to consider
> the whole document before reporting data to the app.

No, I’m not. I’m just thinking that an incomplete document can’t
be a well-formed one; I don’t think anyone here will want to deny
that.

I admit that I was *initially* only considering only DOM-based
processing, for which well-formedness is a prerequisite.

However I never disputed this:

> There's nothing in the XML spec requiring the app to throw away
> the data structures it has already built when the parser
> reports the error.

My discomfort about using ill-formed documents persists, though,
even if Tim Bray’s argument has convinced me that they are the
best practical choice in this context.

The spec does REQUIRE that Atom Documents be XML, and casting
well-formedness aside seems like a rather liberal interpretation
of this demand.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>

---

From: Henri Sivonen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 10:35:00 +0300

On Sep 5, 2005, at 02:34, A. Pagaltzis wrote:

> be a well-formed one;

If the recipient cuts the transmission, it cannot observe whether the 
document was complete. If the sender cuts the transmission, it can do 
so by completing the document.

> well-formedness aside seems like a rather liberal interpretation

I am not suggesting ignoring any Fatal Error. I am saying that as long 
as you haven't seen a Fatal Error, the document is not observably 
ill-formed and it is proper to go on consuming it. If the consumer 
wants the stop consuming the document before the entire document has 
arrived, shouldn't it be allowed to stop?

-- 
Henri Sivonen
[email-masked]
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/