XML in the real world... Was "Re: Another look atnamespaces"

[Ann Navarro]

At 12:05 AM 9/17/99 -0400, Tyler Baker wrote:

>
>So with respect to XHTML, again I beg the question, why do we need three HTML
>specs when most HTML parsers are some hack job that try and handle 
>everything that
>can possibly be thrown at it?. When writing one of these very forgiving 
>parsers,
>falling back on some DTD for validation will get you absolutely nothing.

For current HTML parsers, you need exactly *zero* namespaces. They aren't
aware of them. They ignore them. (The same could be said for DTDs on the
rendering side of things, though authoring is greatly aided by their
inclusion). 

There is no learning curve in regards to namespaces for the developer of
XHTML documents that will be served on today's Internet as text/html. Zero.
None. 

Since XHTML is also XML, namespaces may be used there, which is why we
currently have: 

>So even though in principle 3 XHTML namespaces might make more sense than
having just one

Ann

---

Author of Effective Web Design: Master the Essentials
Coming in September --- Mastering XML

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