Re: XHTML handler module - no equivalent to NOSCRIPT? (PR#8018)

The reason that there is no <noscript> in XHTML2 is that the use case is  
no longer there: you can do everything that you can do with <noscript>  
without it.

This is because in HTML, script has two purposes: as a preprocessor using  
document.write, and as a DOM transformer. <noscript> is only needed for  
the first case, since it provides markup in the case that the  
document.writes haven't been done.

But in the second case, you can provide the DOM tree in the base markup,  
and so <noscript> has no work to do.

For better or worse, XML does not support the case of generating markup on  
the fly as the document is being parsed, and therefore there is no use  
case for <noscript>.

Best wishes,

Steven Pemberton
For the XHTML2 WG.

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:19:13 +0200, <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:
> This comment refers to the XHTML 2.0 Handler module as specified in the
> current XHTML 2.0 public working draft.
>
> It appears that XHTML 2.0 does not provide an element equivalent in  
> function
> to the HTML 4.01 NOSCRIPT element, the content of which is to be  
> rendered just
> in case a script specified in a HANDLER element cannot be executed by  
> the user
> agent.
>
> There may be a case for introducing such an element to provide an  
> alternative
> to scripts that cannot be executed, due for example to a lack of support  
> by
> the user agent for the language specified in the TYPE attribute, or to  
> the
> user's having disabled the application of scripts to the current  
> document by
> way of the user agent's configuration parameters.
>
> I am not here arguing that the reasons in favour of adding such an  
> element are
> necessarily decisive; rather, the intent is to raise this as an issue,  
> which
> may or may not have been considered and decided previously by the working
> group.
>
> A significant limitation of NOSCRIPT as specified in HTML 4.01, which  
> may be
> addressed in XHTML 2.0, is that (as I understand the former  
> specification) the
> content of a NOSCRIPT element is to be rendered if any script earlier in  
> the
> document cannot be executed. It would be preferable, however, to be able  
> to
> confine the rendering of NOSCRIPT (or an equivalent element) to a  
> particular
> script or set of scripts occurring in the document, perhaps by  
> introducing it
> as an optional child of HANDLER, or through an id/idref reference scheme
>
>
>

Received on Monday, 20 August 2007 15:15:11 UTC