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Re: XHTML vs HTML, etc.


From: Victor Engmark
Subject: Re: XHTML vs HTML, etc.
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:27:23 +0200

On 4/18/07, Davi Leal <address@hidden> wrote:
Victor Engmark wrote:
> Davi Leal wrote:

> I sent earlier advocates XHTML for mobile devices. W3C uses XHTML
> 1.1 for their Default Delivery Context
> < http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/#ddc>in their Mobile Web Best
> Practices document.

Theory vs practice.

I had a look at http://simon.html5.org/articles/mobile-results and the rest of the post mentioning it (I didn't have the time to reply before), and I hope it's OK that I reply here.

First, let's have a look at the tests. The first checks that no "special" HTML information is rendered. The second checks whether browsers assume the content is XML. The third sends plain text as application/xhtml+xml. The fourth sends an invalid XHTML document. The fifth sends a .foo file as application/x-bogus. Note that none of the tests sent valid XHTML to the client, so none of these test whether the browsers support XHTML, and none of them show that HTML 5 is supported. My conclusion from these tests is that browsers are pretty lenient, and will parse XHTML as HTML if they don't support the former. How's that a good argument for HTML 5? For more useful information, take a look at the Wikipedia browser comparison page.

By the way, the W3C did in fact not start the HTML 5 effort. That's done by WHATWG. As of now, (X)HTML 5 are working drafts, while XHTML 1.0 has been a W3C recommendation since 2000.

> Google <http://www.google.com/search?q=wireless+xhtml+html> seems to agree.

Using XHTML will lead to a number of desktop and mobile browsers being unable
to access the content.

Unless you have some specific need which only 1.1 can fulfill, "HTML 4.01
Strict" is the best bet today for universal support.

I've used XHTML 1.1 for years, and by using HTTP Accept header sniffing it's easy to support all the browsers I've tried so far - IE6, Firefox 0.6+, and Opera 8+.

The main reason I'm pushing for XHTML is simply that I think it'll make it easier for us in the long run to deal with other XML technologies, such as feeds, SVG, XForms, and others, and make it easier to maintain our _javascript_ and CSS.

I think there is not need to publish the personal information of the people at
the work team. Anyway, there are several which are not working any more.
Besides, I think the point of contact must be always the email lists, to
avoid losing conversation (out of list).

Again, sorry for not being completely clear. I just think it's a good idea that every page contains some instructions for how to contact the GNU Herds team, not anyone else.

--
Victor Engmark
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur - What is said in Latin, sounds profound
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