Re: text/html for xml extensions of XHTML

On Thu, 3 May 2001, Robert Miner wrote:
>>>
>>> 1) For some time to come, most web authors will be preparing content
>>>    that will be read predominantly with older user agents, and
>>>    therefore need to send documents as text/html.
>>>
>>> 2) For some time to come, many web authors will end up sending XHTML
>>>    as text/html due to circumstances beyond their control, even if
>>>    they are willing to send it as text/xml.
>>
>> I acknowledge those points completely. Neither of these points require any
>> documents sent as text/html to be handled as text/xml by any browser.
>
> Ah.  I think I see where we differ then.
>
> What I would like to be able to do is prepare an XHTML document in
> accordance with the HTML compatibility guidelines from Appendix C of
> the XHTML spec, *except* for the inclusion of MathML instances.

In my opinion, browsers should not be promoting non-standard usage of W3C
technologies as you have just described.


> Obviously, the math is worthless in older user agents, but I would
> like the rest of my page to show up, so I could, for example, tell
> readers they need to get a spiffy new browser like Mozilla to see the
> math properly.

So make your index pages HTML, and inform your readers that they will need
more recent browsers on those pages, then link to your text/xml pages
with the text and maths in them.

This is just like the many sites that have PDF documents on them but use
text/html index pages to link to them, with the index pages informing them
that they will need a plugin to view the documents.

-- 
Ian Hickson                                            )\     _. - ._.)   fL
Invited Expert, CSS Working Group                     /. `- '  (  `--'
The views expressed in this message are strictly      `- , ) -  > ) \
personal and not those of Netscape or Mozilla. ________ (.' \) (.' -' ______

Received on Thursday, 3 May 2001 23:38:29 UTC