Re: FW: XHTML 1.1 and DOCTYPE declaration

On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 22:31:06 +0200, Brad Pettit  
<Brad.Pettit@microsoft.com> wrote:
> Requiring the DOCTYPE makes it more straightforward to differentiate  
> XHTML when there is no http content-type available. Otherwise it could  
> appear like quirky HTML.

I partly agree, but wouldn't the namespace be enough? No one is going to  
put the namespace on quirks HTML surely?

Best wishes,

Steven

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-html-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-html-wg-request@w3.org] On  
> Behalf Of Shane McCarron
> Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 12:07 PM
> To: HTML WG
> Subject: XHTML 1.1 and DOCTYPE declaration
>
>
> At the risk of reopening something better left closed...
>
> We have from time to time discussed the wisdom of requiring or not
> requiring a DOCTYPE declaration on XHTML Family Documents. Note that
> M12N itself does not say anything about this, deferring instead to the
> conformance requirements of markup languages defined using M12N.
>
> In the most recent public XHTML 1.1 draft
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/) we indicate that the DOCTYPE declaration
> is required.  In the current editors draft
> (http://htmlwg.mn.aptest.com/htmlwg/xhtml11) we have changed this to a
> should (this was done on 20 February by meprobably when dealing with the
> XML Schema group's comments from ages ago).
>
> I have been thinking about this A LOT this past week, and I feel we are
> making a serious mistake here.  This is our markup language, and agents
> need a way to know what language they are encountering when they see
> documents in OUR language.  the DOCTYPE declaration is the only portable
> mechanism we have for declaring this right now.
>
> I understand the arguments about XML Schema, and I don't care.  If you
> want to validating using a schema implementation, go ahead.  Use the
> schemaLocation attribute to point to our schema implementation.  But if
> you happen to point to a local copy or something, how is a user agent to
> have a CLUE about what markup language you pretend to be using?  I
> suppose we could require that if a schemaLocation is used it MUST point
> to our well known location... at least that way a user agent author
> could do a mapping.
>
> Anyway... I think we have made a mistake here.  There is no reason I can
> think of to make the DOCTYPE declaration a should instead of a MUST.
> Having a DOCTYPE declaration does not mandate any special form of
> processing nor of validation as far as I know.   Finally, removing the
> requirement for a DOCTYPE declaration is a major change for XHTML 1.1.
> If there are agents that expect this requirement from the original
> version of  XHTML 1.1 they will not correctly process documents from
> this new version.
>
> Comments?
>
> --
> Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
> Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
> ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com
>
>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 29 March 2007 12:17:53 UTC