Re: a recommendation - Received on Thursday, 18 April 2002 14:01:42 EDT

> [Original Message]
> From: Christian Wolfgang Hujer <Christian.Hujer@itcqis.com>
>
> Hi,
>
> Am Donnerstag, 4. Dezember 2003 01:25 schrieb Ernest Cline:
> > > [Original Message]
> > > From: Christian Wolfgang Hujer <Christian.Hujer@itcqis.com>
> > >
> > > Am Mittwoch, 3. Dezember 2003 21:57 schrieb Ernest Cline:
> > > > > [Original Message]
> > > > > From: Christian Wolfgang Hujer <Christian.Hujer@itcqis.com>
> > > > >
> > > > > And believe me, as soon as there's a Content-Type and a
> > > > > User Agent for XHTML 2.0, I will use it.
> > > >
> > > > Why?
> > >
> > > Because XHTML 2.0 provides nice features for authors.
> > > I especially like <h/> and <section/>, but also <nl/>.
> >
> > <snip>
>
> some more reasons came into my mind, not for XHTML 2.0 in particular but
for 
> XHTML in general.
> As soon as user agent support is more advanced, supporting XML better and 
> supporting more additional technologies, the following features will be
very 
> useful:
>
> 1. Inclusion of document fragments using external entities
> 2. Usage of XML Inclusions (XInclude)
> 3. Linking with XML Linking Language (XLink)
> 4. Pointing to document fragments and similar using XPointer and XPath
> 5. And of course being open for all additional technologies like SVG,
MathML 
> etc..

All of which is very nice, but misses the main point of my original
response.
If people need or want an XML version of XHTML, there is already
XHTML 1 and XHTML 1.1.  While there are some nice features in XHTML2
(enough that as soon as there is widespread support of it as opposed to
support by a single user agent as you stated, I will use it by default) 
There is nothing in the proposal that cannot be achieved by prudent use
of XHTML 1.  <section>, <h>, and <nl> are all very nice, but they are not
enough to cause the average user to wish to abandon XHTML1 or even
HTML4 until XHTML2 is nearly as well supported as HTML4 is today.
What is needed to spur those who make user agents who are more
concerned about what sells than supporting standards to adopt
XHTML2 quickly is some new ability not easily mimicked in earlier
versions that is also useful to a significant portion of users.  What that
ability might be, I don't know at this time, but without it, I see nothing
in XHTML2 that will cause those who aren't already supporting
XHTML1 to move any faster towards XHTML support.

Received on Friday, 5 December 2003 08:21:54 UTC