RE: Formatting Objects considered harmful

James C wrote:
>This issue here is whether to send (X)HTML or arbitrary XML to the
>client. That's a reasonable issue, and I think there are good arguments
>for keeping the XML that you send to the client close to HTML, 

the argument of sending xhtml (as a near approximation of html)
is reasonable if the (x)html is clean, has no java /jscript,
is not using tables for formatting and 101 other constraints which
detract from the accessibility of an html file.

Yes James, send the source xml file. Its a cleaner start than html.
And if the stylesheet can be used to create an aural / braille / plain
text stylesheet then so much the better. the two as a pair
(xml plus xsl) would surely be a better starting point than the .....
that people deliver as html these days.

If you want to find out just how accessible html is, find a colleague using
access technology (even good $1K stuff) and point it at some of 
your favourite sites. Where visual appeal wins out, accessibility often
suffers inadvertently. That might rid you of the view that all html is
accessible, hence a good target in an XML world. It certainly did for me,
I felt a right pratt. 
It would appear that we can't persuade every
web author to generate accessible html, so lets make a good start on XML
with xsl doing the things we levered into html whilst keeping up with 
the fashions in presentational attributes.


regards, DaveP


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