XHTML 1.0 returned to HTML WG

Thu Nov 4 05:37:31 GMT 1999

Curt Arnold sez:

> After ranting on application profiles, etc.  I wanted to clarify that it
> doesn't seem to be necessary to get an answer to application profiles for
> XHTML to be useful.  Application profiles would be a useful thing to have
> resolved for other XML applications, but doesn't seem necessary for XHTML
> 1.0.  The three namespaces thing seemed to be adding a feature to XHTML 1.0
> that HTML 4.01 did not have.  As a new feature, it should have probably been
> reserved for XHTML 1.1 or whatever.  

Actually, I found the namespace feature to be handy and quite logical, paralleling the 
triple DTD for HTML 4.0.  But then, I just tinkered a bit with my processor and didn't 
have any problems making it work.  (I use one macro which generates the !DOCTYPE 
statement, as I don't like to have to remember that whole string.  When I added the 
XHTML processing path, I just reworked the macro so that it would handle the 
!DOCTYPE statement and the <html> tag - and, on the XHTML side, it also adds the 
namespace stuff and the <?xml?> tag.)

As for reserving the feature for XHTML 1.1...why?  XHTML 1.0 is a significant jump 
that will require almost every webmaster on the planet to do some fixing...given that 
scope, how significant is the effort expended to change the opening <html> tag?!?

> Namespace free XHTML would be fine with me.

Depends on what you mean by that; I see the dangerous potential there of descending 
into the same morass we currently have with HTML, where we theoretically go by the 
DTD, but in actuality, it's anybody's guess what browserisms a random user agent will 
support.  Witness the spotty support CSS1 and CSS2 have, not to mention HTML4 
itself.

As a content provider, I don't mind the namespace attribute one bit.  It's just one more 
thing to remember when coding, and I have a nice tool which remembers that for me - in 
short, I literally dropped the code in and forgot about it.  From the programming side, I 
really don't see a whole lot of difference; if the UAs we have for HTML blithely ignore 
specified DTDs when given as !DOCTYPE statements, why should we expect that the 
UAs we will have for XML will do any better?

 Rev. Robert L. Hood  | http://rev-bob.gotc.com/
  Get Off The Cross!  | http://www.gotc.com/

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