Allow other doctypes

In HTML5:
* Doctypes are just for triggering standards mode [1].
* All text/html content is to be processed as HTML5 [2].

I propose making the HTML4 Strict and XHTML1 doctypes conforming, in 
addition to <!doctype html>.

Rationale:

1. The HTML4 Strict and XHTML1 doctypes are from current W3C 
Recommendations.
2. They already have somewhat widespread use (professionals using CSS).
3. They already achieve what HTML5 wants (trigger standards mode).
4. So they might as well be conforming sequences of bytes to trigger 
standards mode in HTML5.

It's a bit sad, imho, to say all currently conforming HTML4 and XHTML1 
documents will become non-conforming solely because they use a sequence of 
bytes which is not the shortest possible but does exactly the same thing.

[1] 
<http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-writing.html#the-doctype>
[2] 
<http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-conformance.html#interactive> 

Received on Saturday, 16 June 2007 21:32:30 UTC