Article:		Escaped Markup Considered Harmful
Subject:		What then?
Date:		2003-08-21 13:03:42
From:		John Vance
Can someone please give me a pointer on *how* to embed html-elements in RSS otherwise? A subset of tags should be at least supported. Also most sites use HTML 4 and don't want to switch to XHTML so they don't loose support for older browsers. "<br/>" is not acceptable in these environments. (For example "Server-on-desktop" News Aggregators, which have to incorporate news supplied via RSS in a desktop-served HTML4 website). So embedding mark-up by having 2 levels, a "surface structure" (RSS) and a "deep structure" (HTML4 embedded), is the only way to solve these problems? Any ideas out there?

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• What then?
  2003-08-22 08:18:55 Joel Bennett [Reply]
  
  the whole point of xhtml (1.0 transitional, anyway) is that it's supposed to be backwards compatible. If you use
  (note the space) I don't see what browsers are going to give you trouble with that.

  
  The fact is, it's ridiculous to try to use XML just to carry old-style html. If you feel you must put formatted code in there, you need to use a namespace, and valid xhtml. If you think you need to use old html 4.01 ... then you haven't put enough thought into what your RSS feed is for.

  
  I gotta agree that the way to fix this is for the aggregators to parse it 'right' ... when lockergnome starts getting more emails about the strange html entities in their xml feeds, maybe then they'll fix it.