[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: XHTML 2 Working Group won't be renewed?

• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
• To: 'XML Developers List' <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:54:32 -0400

rjelliffe@allette.com.au wrote:
> But does WF actually catch the kinds of errors people make? Or does it
> create the idea and requirement that some things are errors, and allow
> people think they have achieved something by conforming to it, that they
> have worked hard, whereas in fact they are little further advanced than
> they would have been otherwise? Does XHTML merely pander to neat-freaks?

If you're scripting HTML, writing well-formed XHTML makes life vastly 
more predictable.  The same is true to a lesser extent of CSS.

It's not just human neat-freaks - it's the computer neat-freaks too. 
And if you want to see where giving up on that dream leads, I'd 
recommend reading the HTML 5 material on parsing:

<http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-html5-20090423/syntax.html#syntax>

Yes, that's a real document.

> XHTML will always be necessary, because XSLTs that generate HTML need an
> HTML formulated as XML. I don't think that the number of documents
> delivered over the web using XHTML is a relevant metric.
> 
> I would prefer if HTML was reformulated as a three layer technology:
> 
>    Wiki -> HTML -> XHTML
> 
> reconstructing more of what SGML did but cleanly. Something like this
> seems much more doable under the aegis of a single WG.

I don't think that's why this is happening, though.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: XHTML 2 Working Group won't be renewed?
    • From: Laurens van den Oever <laurens@xopus.com>
  • Re: XHTML 2 Working Group won't be renewed?
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>

• References:
  • XHTML 2 Working Group won't be renewed?
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@redhat.com>
  • Re: XHTML 2 Working Group won't be renewed?
    • From: Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>
  • Re: XHTML 2 Working Group won't be renewed?
    • From: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)
  • Re: XHTML 2 Working Group won't be renewed?
    • From: rjelliffe@allette.com.au