Re: IBM Position Statement on XForms and Web Forms 2.0

John Boyer wrote:
> I propose the alternative of everyone taking a step back and a deep
> breath and writing some errata to fix the problems rather than throwing
> out the baby with the bathwater.
> 
> For example, anyone who said all of the following:
> 1) "XHTML is an XML language"
> 2) "XHTML can be classified as a particular mimetype M"

   Statement #2 is incorrect. First, not all XHTML can be sent with the
"text/html" MIME type. Only XHTML that complies with Appendix C can be
sent with "text/html". Second, it is not "classified" as that MIME type.
It is "labeled" with that MIME type, and the XHTML 1.0 specification
explicitly refrains from defining the meaning of "text/html".

   (Please note that according to the XHTML FAQ, XHTML 1.1 cannot be
served as "text/html". This makes sense when you consider that, among
other things, XHTML 1.1 doesn't support the |lang| attribute.)

> 3) "XHTML+something cannot be classified as mimetype M"

   Statement #3 is supported by the W3C Note "XHTML Media Types", by the
way.

> should probably be the one directly encumbered with writing the erratum.
>  Given #1 and #2, #3 categorically does not follow.

   Incorrect. XHTML 1.0 was specifically designed to degrade in such a
way that it could be handled in HTML user agents _IF_ the XHTML document
conforms to Appendix C. An arbitrary XML language is not necessarily
designed in such a manner, therefore you can't say that XHTML plus an
arbitrary XML language could be served as "text/html". And any language
that degrades into HTML in the way XHTML 1.0 does is by definition a
subset of XHTML.

Received on Saturday, 2 September 2006 10:56:18 UTC