[stavros]

I think the GP has an issue not with the specification part, but with the part where it's forbidden for clients to render a noncompliant page.

[tardedmeme]

It's not forbidden. They just don't render certain noncompliant pages. Namely the ones with gross syntax errors.

Why are we okay with formats like PDF that have similarly catastrophic error handling?

[zbentley]

I mean, we aren’t ok with that for PDF. That’s why PDF renderers have incredibly baroque rules for parsing weirdly or brokenly formatted documents, and why many PDF documents fall back to embedding images or absolute-positioned pixel-like layouts for compatibility purposes.

[stavros]

I mean, the linked page and the comment above say it is:

> It is explicitly forbidden for clients to accept any page that doesn't conform with the specification. This prevents the standardized diabolic rules that one must implement in order to correct a