Re: HTML and XML

Michael(tm) Smith wrote:

> Regarding the world voting with its feet: As far as the Web goes
> at least, it would seem that it's instead really been a matter of
> the vast majority of content providers voting against XML/XHTML
> completely and voting for HTML instead (by choosing to serve
> non-WF HTML, and by choosing to serve XHTML as text/html so that
> it gets processed by HTML parsers in browsers instead of by XML
> parsers in browsers).
> 

On this point, I have to call B.S. again. That a document is served as 
text/html does not make it HTML. Much less does it make it not XML. If a 
document satisfies the BNF grammar and the various well-formedness 
constraints, it is XML, whatever you call it. It may also be HTML, and 
perhaps other things as well.

The MIME type is not normative. That someone has labeled a document as 
one thing or another does not make it that thing.

If people are serving well-formed XML, it is likely they do so because 
they find it useful to do so, whatever MIME type happens to be assigned.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu