XHTML handler module - no equivalent to NOSCRIPT?

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 06:15:23 UTC