Re: What is an XHTML document?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel Hiester" <alatus@mail.earthlink.net>
To: <www-standards@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2000 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: What is an XHTML document?


Karl Ove Hufthammer stated:
"A browser shouldn't even *try* to render a type document it doesn't
recognize,
i.e. XHTML 1.1 or 2.0. For a browser, a document should only be considered
XHTML
if it uses the XHTML 1.0 DOCTYPE. (Of course, future browsers, developed
when
later versions of XHTML are available should support the new DOCTYPES)."

The problem with this idea is that it creates the necessity for content
creators to code their XHTML to old specs, to be friendly to people with
older browsers, and I'm sure we all agree we've had too much of that. IMHO,
it would be ideal if the UI could actually parse a namespace, but I'm not
really in the know about how that works.

How would that work? Could Mozilla (in theory) be able to parse a namespace
and successfully render a document based on what it parses from the
namespace? For example, if an XHTML 2.0 namespace is specified in a
document, could Mozilla download data from the namespace url, and use that
to be able to render XHTML 2.0 documents? Or is it necessary for a binary
rendering module to be created and installed in Mozilla? (or IE or Opera,
for that matter)

Daniel

(p.s. I do agree with Karl that if at all possible, a UI should parse a
document based on what namespace or doctype declaration exists, and if no
such declaration or namespace is present, then the UI should assume it's
HTML4 transitional.)

Received on Tuesday, 25 July 2000 15:59:47 UTC