James M Snell wrote:
Antone, Very good write up. The fact that xml:base on div is not valid XHTML is somewhat irrelevant given that there is an identical problem with xml:lang. For instance, if I have <content xml:lang="en"><div xml:lang="fr">...</div></content> and I drop the div silently, then I've got a problem. Granted, the producer of the atom feed really shouldn't have done this, but we still need to be able to handle it properly if itdoes happen.
I don't agree bug compliance is the way to go. If downstream code has to patch against broken providers that's a race to the bottom - it's a culture where specs cease to matter because they can be mercilessly E and E'd. File a bug report instead.
Otoh if we have spec'd in a feature here which doesn't sit on top on XML infrastructure properly, that's another matter - "hey, xml lib, handle this element special like, cos atom markup don't care about clean layering" sounds like a problem. We seem to keep doing that with xml:* features (lang, include, base). Atom is to XML as HTML is to SGML?
cheers Bill