Never mind if a feed is even well-formed XML or not (let alone whether it validates as the flavor of RSS it proclaims to be).

And there WON’T be an option for validation either, because Nick has gone so far as to write his own parser that just doesn’t care whether something is XML in the first place.

I think this is actually *harmful*. XML is different from HTML, and for something to be XML the least it has to be is well-formed. If your RSS reader ignores this (even as an option) how would you ever find out whether a feed is valid?

With SharpReader I do find out (and Luke has promised validation will at least remain as an option); when a feed isn’t valid, I inform those responsible for the feed. And it works. And think about this: most feeds are generated by a program – so if the error is caused by that program and it gets fixed, not just that one feed will get fixed but a whole number of them. We end up with *less* tagsoup.

If you would use a tagsoup reader like FeedDemon instead, all we’ll end up with is *more* tagsoup, not less. Like I said, harmful.

I won’t be even downloading the beta.