intertwingly

It’s just data

Optional Elements Required

Anne van Kesteren: The problem here is that OpenID does not use a proper HTML parser (not even one that follows the HTML 4 specification). <head> et cetera are actually required

The spec isn’t as clear as it ought to be.  From the OpenID Authentication 1.1 § 3.1:

In order for a Consumer to know the Identity Provider authoritative for an Identifier, the End User must add markup to the HEAD section of the HTML document located at their URL.

FWIW, I have a similar issue with the fact that the specs don’t distinguish between temporary and permanent redirects.  From § 3.2.1:

Consumers MUST canonicalize the Identifier URL, following redirects, and note the final URL. The final, canonicalized URL is the End User’s Identifier.

Asymptotically Converging on Standards

Shelley Powers: Microsoft is asking us to declare our intentions, it’s only fair we ask the same of it. If Microsoft won’t meet us half-way–if the company releases IE8 without support for the HTML5 DOCTYPE or XHTML, and without at least some guarantee as to when we’ll see SVG in IE–then we’ll have our answer. It may not be the answer we want, but it will be the answer we need.

If Microsoft were to declare that the following were to be treated as equivalent, then a lot of the concerns expressed by the web community would go away

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