Re: Are the public HTML DTDs valid XML?

Hi Christian,

"Christian Wolfgang Hujer" <Christian.Hujer@itcqis.com> wrote:

> The reason why I wrote the wrong name "XHTML Basic 1.0" is that I
regularly
> write that DOCTYPE declaration, but only rarely read the recommendation
> again. But XHTML Basic really is the true name. It's enough to read the
> heading of the recommendation to know that. Shame on me.

Please don't blame yourself. Your contribution is much bigger than this
slight mistake.

> I now am interested in the reason *why* it is XHTML Basic and not "XHTML
> Basic 1.0". I guess it is because that quite device independant "subset"
of
> HTML is, on one hand, based on XHTML Mod and therefore (parts of) HTML
4.01,
> so it includes about 10 years of experience, and on the other hand, it
shall
> not be extended in the next years anyway, except of custom module
> extensions?

I think your consideration is very precise and to the point. Actually, XHTML
Basic is for non-PC devices, such as mobile phones or digital TVs, so the
other major reason is that it is not preferable to add the version number,
which may mislead people to expect "the next version" will come soon, to
the specification for such devices. Because most of them are very difficult
to update their functions and/or software to comply wth "new version of the
specification".

> And I want to know which are the other points you cannot fully agree. You
> wrote *some* points, so I guess it's more than one.

Please don't worry about that. They are not critical things, and not general
things. For example, I was thinking about your recommendation about
character encoding. For some XHTML writers, such as Chinese/Japanese/
Korean web designers  (like Russian people:-), it will be critical to use
encoding
other than US-ASCII, and sometimes even other than UNICODE. For example,
some Japanese mobile phones are using "Shift_JIS".

The other thing I was thinking is your recommendation about compatibility
issues for legacy browsers, such as whitespace before slash in empty
element (<br />). From XHTML Basic point of view, it is not necessary
because the specification is not intended to be backward compatible.
But, I understand your "tutorial" is for general XHTML and not for XHTML
Basic, and even for XHTML Basic, this recommendation does not do
something harmful. So, please forget "points I cannot fully agree".
And therefore,

> But I hope you won't list the points that are XHTML Basic related, like
<hr
> />, which doesn't exist in XHTML Basic, since my intention was to write
> about XHTML in common, not specifically XHTML Basic ;)

I think I understand your intention.

> Perhaps I should rewrite the "tutorial" in a more precise way and tell
more
> about the differences between XHTML Basic, XHTML 1.0 and XHTML 1.1. What
do
> you think?

I don't think your tutorial should be rewritten in substantial points, but
of course,
I will not prevent you from improving it.

Regards,

Shinichi Matsui
matsui@isl.mei.co.jp

Received on Sunday, 9 December 2001 00:51:16 UTC