Re: XHTML Considered Harmful

On Sun, 24 Jun 2001, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Jun 2001, Arjun Ray wrote:
> >
> > You're forgetting the conformance requirements.  

> XHTML (1 Strict) says *nothing* about rendering. 

As Eliot Kimber noted, there seems to be more than one meaning
attached to this word.

> The styling is done using some appropriate transformation from a
> DOM to a rendering tree (e.g. CSS or, god forbid, XSL:FOs).

The styling of what?  How?  Would you care to explain how item 4 in
the user agent conformance requirements should be understood?  (Note
that the requirement does *not* say anything about a document being
"invalid" formal or otherwise.)

> In a non-validating UA, this means you can pass well-formed junk
> to the UA and it will render as per the CSS rules.

What rules?  What if there aren't any rules?  What are the "rules" for
text content found in elements *defined* to have element content only?
  
> The rendering rules are well defined (by the styling language).
> The processing rules are well defined (if it is invalid, then
> semantics are void). 

You did examine the two examples I gave?  (a <foo> child of <head> and
a <foo> child of <ul>)

> What more do you want?

I don't want anything.  I'm just aware that non-geeks are likely to
expect, and therefore what willing vendors will eventually provide.


Arjun

Received on Monday, 25 June 2001 01:57:12 UTC