[Bug 785] validator does not supply reasonable Accept header by default

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=785





------- Comment #12 from david@dorward.me.uk  2007-04-24 11:16 -------
> So, it means, among other interpretations, that the validator should offer

I can't see anything there which describes what CLIENTS should do. Only
servers.

> shouldn'b any kind of reminder that the document served as 
> text/html is not correct application/xhtml+xml.

I've just tested an XHTML 1.0 document with the validator. It gave no
complaints with text/html or application/xhtml+xml

It does complain when a XHTML 1.1 document is served as text/html, but the
documentation is pretty clear when it says that you SHOULD NOT do that.

If the problem is caused by you detecting that a client doesn't support XHTML
and then serving XHTML 1.1 as text/html despite the specification, then don't
do that. If you are doing that, then it is highly unlikely that you are getting
any of the possible benefits of client side XHTML, so you might as well stick
to HTML. Even if you continue using XHTML then its relatively trivial to use
XSLT to output HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 from an XHTML 1.1 document (and since the
extra features added by XHTML aren't available to text/html clients, this is
unlikely to cause problems).

> And of course it only applies to xhtml 1.0, but if you are validating an 
> xhtml 1.1 document, ther is no possible interpretation to use text/html.
> Execept, the fact that the documents should be served that way for the 
> Explorer.

Needing to support clients that do not support a standard is usually a good
reason to use a different standard. It isn't usually a good reason to violate
the specification.

Received on Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:16:38 UTC