271237 - Document served through application/xhtml+xml generates uncaught exception if document.write is used

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 68193

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Kevin Hughes]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When a page is served with application/xhtml+xml as mime-type, and
document.write is used, an uncaught exception will show up in your JS console.
It's logical that document.write doesn't work in this case, but shouldn't there
be a proper error or something?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Visit a site using document.write and being served with application/xhtml+xml
2. Observe JS console

Actual Results:  
Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Object cannot be created in this
context"  code: "9" nsresult: "0x80530009 (NS_ERROR_DOM_NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR)" 
location: "http://juicystudio.com/mimetest/docwrite.js Line: 1"]

Expected Results:  
Return a proper error.

Comment 1

[timeless]

seems like a perfectly reasonable error. do you want a pretty message telling
users that it doesn't make sense to use document.write with xml and that they
should use dom apis to create nodes and append them?

Comment 2

[Kevin Hughes]

(In reply to comment #1)
> seems like a perfectly reasonable error. do you want a pretty message telling
> users that it doesn't make sense to use document.write with xml and that they
> should use dom apis to create nodes and append them?

Well, why not?

Comment 3

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

(In reply to comment #0)
> When a page is served with application/xhtml+xml as mime-type, and
> document.write is used, an uncaught exception will show up in your JS console.
> It's logical that document.write doesn't work in this case, [...]

No, it is not.  

,-<http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20030109/html.html#ID-5353782642>
| 
| 1.3. XHTML and the HTML DOM
| 
| [...]
| Note: The interfaces provided in this document are only for [HTML 4.01] and
| [XHTML 1.0] documents and are not guaranteed to work with any future version
| of XHTML.

,-http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20030109/html.html#ID-26809268
| 
| 1.5. Objects related to HTML documents
| 
| Interface HTMLDocument
| [...]
| interface HTMLDocument : Document {
|   [...]
|   void               write(in DOMString text);
|   void               writeln(in DOMString text);
|   [...]
| }
| 
| write
|   Write a string of text to a document stream opened by open(). Note that the
|   function will produce a document which is not necessarily driven by a DTD
|   and therefore might be produce an invalid result in the context of the
|   document.
| 
|   Parameters
| 
|     text of type DOMString
|       The string to be parsed into some structure in the document structure
|       model.
| 
|   No Return Value
|   No Exceptions
| 
| writeln
|   Write a string of text followed by a newline character to a document stream
|   opened by open(). Note that the function will produce a document which is
|   not necessarily driven by a DTD and therefore might be produce an invalid
|   result in the context of the document
| 
|   Parameters
| 
|     text of type DOMString
|       The string to be parsed into some structure in the document structure
|       model.
| 
|   No Return Value
|   No Exceptions

(see also:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20030109/ecma-script-binding.html>)

AIUI, the Specification refers to both HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 documents when
referring to "HTML documents" and so document.write(ln) applies to XHTML 1.0
documents as well (as it would be reasonable, taking into account that other
HTML DOM methods work for XHTML 1.0 documents).  There is no restriction to
XHTML 1.0 documents that are served as text/html (although such appears to be
nonsensical on closer inspection of the markup language's features, it is to be
noted that document.write(ln) works then in Mozilla).  It is stated that using
the document.write(ln) method "might be produce an invalid result", however it
does not forbid that the method is used in XHTML context at all.  And it does
not state in any way that the method may throw exceptions.


PointedEars

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 68193 ***

Comment 5

[Kevin Hughes]

I don't see how this is a dupe of 68193. I filed this bug about the error
generated if document.write is used, not the fact document.write doesn't work.

Comment 6

[Kevin Hughes]

Hmm, I just discovered that the testcase in 68193
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=24778&action=view) generates a
'document.write is not a function'. Why is there a difference between
application/xhtml+xml and text/xml?