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Google is killing the open web, part 2

(wok.oblomov.eu)
418 points akagusu | 2 comments | 17 Nov 25 15:41 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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spankalee ◴[17 Nov 25 16:55 UTC] No.45955426[source]▶
This page makes some wild claims, like Google wants to deprecate MathML, even though it basically just landed. Yeah, the Chrome team wasn't prioritizing the work and it came through Igalia, but the best time for Chrome to kill MathML would have been before it was actually usable on the web.

The post also fails to mention that all browsers want to remove XSLT. The topic was brought up in several meetings by Firefox reps. It's not a Google conspiracy.

I also see that the site is written in XHTML and think the author must just really love XML, and doesn't realize that most browser maintainers think that XHTML is a mistake and failure. Being strict on input in failing to render anything on an error is antithetical to the "user agent" philosophy that says the browser should try to render something useful to the user anyway. Forgiving HTML is just better suited for the messy web. I bet this fuels some of their anger here.

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1. zzo38computer ◴[17 Nov 25 21:14 UTC] No.45958378[source]▶
XHTML does have some advantages compared with ordinary HTML, such as the parsing being more consistent, since the file will specify where literal text is used and which commands are or are not a block that is expected to contain other things.

(It could still try to render in case of an error, but display the error message as well, perhaps.)

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2. spankalee ◴[17 Nov 25 22:39 UTC] No.45959224[source]▶
HTML parsing is specified, including what to do for various errors, and very consistent across browsers. XML parsing may be more regular, but that's not really an advantage to users in any way, while HTML's resiliency is.