5.1.1 oversimplifies

This is my opinion of course, not the opinion of the w3c. 

From the March 4 draft, I found section 5.1.1 to be simplistic to the
point that it makes statements that are misleading and technically
untrue. 

I disagree with the statement "A server might still choose to transmit
an XHTML document as text/xml, in those circumstances where only
generic XML processing on the document is required."  I believe that
an XHTML parser can figure out that a document with a mime type of
text/xml can deduce that a document is an XHTML document by looking at
the DOCTYPE declaration, for example.  I may send you an XHTML
document with a mime type of text/xml on the grounds that if you only
understand XML, you can atleast validate and generically process and
display the document using a style sheet; and if you understand XHTML,
you can infer from the DOCTYPE that it is XHTML, so no information is
lost.

That said, I believe there are cases where you would want to use
text/html or text/xhtml instead, so I personally support your practice
of letting implementers choose between the three as appropriate.

-Rolf 

-- 
| Rolf Nelson (rolf@w3.org), Project Manager, W3C at MIT
|   "Try to learn something about everything
|             and everything about something."  --Huxley

Received on Tuesday, 16 March 1999 15:37:20 UTC