Re: XHTML Family Documents and Media Types

Hi Shane,

Cc: www-validator, which is the feedback point for the markup  
validator, and which is read by other validator developers, as you know.

On Mar 17, 2008, at 13:59 , Shane McCarron wrote:

> I noticed today that the validator complains if an XHTML family  
> document is delivered with media type text/html.  While this is not  
> the recommended mechanism, it is certainly not an error.

It is not an error in the markup validator, either. It is a warning,  
and only for XHTML > 1.0. XHTML 1.0 passes as text/html, as its spec  
specifically allows it to be served as text/html.

For other languages, the absence/presence of warning closely follows  
mature, published specs. If the XHTML2 WG changed its mind, fine,  
please update the specs and we'll update the tools.

>  In fact, it is the only way to get IE to render it properly.  The  
> XHTML 2 Working Group is in the process of updating the Note about  
> this so it is clearer, but I would appreciate it if you would relax  
> this restriction in the validator as soon as possible.  It is  
> confusing to our end users.


For now, as far as I know, the validator is in sync with:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/#summary

That said, sure, if you republish the note to specifically allow a  
certain media type for all XHTML family, I will update the w3c  
validator accordingly. Could you give me a pointer to the updated  
note? A pre-publication draft is fine, I just need the precise  
conformance terms.


If I may add my personal opinion, I think this may be a mistake.  
Overloading the text/html for XHTML 1.0 was already not a good idea  
IMHO, but at least it had the HTML compatibility guidelines. Wouldn't  
it be possible to work with Microsoft to make IE support XHTML media  
type, instead of overloading text/html even further with a whole  
family of XML languages, and jeopardizing extensibility in the process?


Also, my particular opinion notwithstanding, this decision seems quite  
inconsistent with the way HTML5 (and in particular its XML  
serialization) is heading:
[[
XHTML documents (XML documents using elements from the HTML namespace)  
that use the new features described in this specification and that are  
served over the wire (e.g. by HTTP) must be sent using an XML MIME  
type such as application/xml orapplication/xhtml+xml and must not be  
served as text/html. [RFC3023]

]] (HTML 5 draft, section 1.3. Conformance requirements)

see also http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/#html-vs



I trust coordination with the html5 group should help here.  
Inconsistency between XHTML specs could have ill consequences, which I  
am sure noone is wanting.


Thank you.
olivier
-- 
olivier Thereaux - W3C - http://www.w3.org/People/olivier/
W3C Open Source Software: http://www.w3.org/Status

Received on Monday, 17 March 2008 18:46:22 UTC