Lachlan Hunt wrote:
Henri Sivonen wrote:
* Make an element with the local name 'meta' in the SVG namespace and
with an attribute charset in no namespace conforming as a child of a
root <svg> element in text/html.
* The above formulation requires <!DOCTYPE html> for <svg> root
element, which *would be well-formed* but *not valid* in XML due to
the html vs. svg name mismatch.
The problem that the SVG WG have described they are trying to address,
at least in internal discussions at Opera, is that people will produce
otherwise conforming SVG documents, which could in theory be served as
XML, but due to the failure to properly configure their server, somehow
end up being served as text/html. This is basically an error condition
that they are trying to address more gracefully. Such content would not
include either a DOCTYPE or a meta element.
Besides, the presence of the HTML DOCTYPE should be a clear indicator
that the file is intended to be HTML, not SVG. But by allowing such
non-HTML content to include the HTML DOCTYPE and the meta element,
suddenly we've slipped down the slope from handling an edge case error,
to legitimising the abuse of text/html as a dumping ground for non-HTML
content.
I may be wrong, but I don't think that's Henri's point. I think we can
all agree that svg served as text/html should never be considered
conformant.
What I see Henri's point as being is that in order to make SVG served as
text/html mostly work, some changes are required, and he's taken a stab
at what those changes are. Unfortunately, those changes may not be
enough as they are predicated on the content not triggering quirks mode.
- Sam Ruby
