- From: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
- Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 19:11:35 -0700
- To: www-tag@w3.org
One of the characteristics that distinguished the Web from preceding
hypertext systems is that the protocols defined behavior in the
presence of errors. For example, HTTP defines a standard response with
an error code (404) for a common case of a failure to access a resource
via its URI. Also, HTML specifies "must-ignore" processor for
user-agents that encounter markup that is not part of HTML. Another
example is XML, which has a rigorous definition ("well-formedness") of
what constitutes an XML document and how software should react when
encountering data that fails to meet that definition.
Web Architecture requires designers of protocols and software to
specify error-handling behavior. There is no architectural preference
for any particular error-handling behavior; for example both HTML's
must-ignore policy and XML's well-formedness policy have been highly
successful.
Cheers, Tim Bray http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
Received on Tuesday, 21 October 2003 22:11:35 UTC