Re: XHTML Considered Harmful

On Sun, 24 Jun 2001, Arjun Ray wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Jun 2001, Ian Hickson wrote:
>> What's wrong with XHTML sent as text/xml?
> One word: compatibility. It says all the wrong things, and prevents
> all the right things.

If you want compatability, use tag soup and send it as text/html. In my
opinion, appendix C of XHTML 1.0 was indeed a waste of time.

What is wrong with XHTML itself, though? Don't forget Appendix C is
non-normative! You will not hear any disagreement from me on the subject
of "Appendix C Considered Harmful", but that is a far cry from XHTML
itself. Also, remember that XHTML2 is moving in a direction that will
completely break backwards compatability, so again, I don't see why XHTML
itself would be considered harmful.


> Using it to pick up the dirty laundry trailed by beer-and-pizza
> programmer jocks has entailed a steadily growing list of "application
> conventions", half-hearted deprecations, and copious prose which
> perforce is all the more sumptuous whenever the point has been not to
> try hard to say something but to try hard to evade something.

I can't help but feel that that sentence is also trying hard to evade
something. Plain english would be preferable! :-)

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