- From: Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 19:42:53 -0500
- To: Terje Bless <link@tss.no>
- Cc: W3C Validator <www-validator@w3.org>
On Sun, Jan 30, 2000 at 11:58:03PM +0100, Terje Bless wrote: > On 30.01.00 at 13:22, Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> wrote: > >2. Gerald needs to rethink the utility of having the default be > > XHTML 1.0. While I can see -why- he'd choose this -- the W3C > > Oh Crap! > > This explains the rush of weird error reports the last couple > of days. :-( > > You can't make XHTML the default for documents without a > DOCTYPE; it'll break just about anything out there. I thought > the idea of serving XHTML as text/html was pure idiocy to start > with, but if you start assuming it's XHTML in the validator > you've thoroughly broken backwards compatibility. > > The only way to handle this that won't break badly is to assume > that text/xml is XML, text/xhtml is XHTML, text/html is HTML > 4.01[0], unless a DOCTYPE is given in which case the DOCTYPE is > used. I think I'll do something like: - if the content type is text/html and there's no doctype, then - if there's an xmlns attribute on the first element, do XML well-formedness checking (as it does now for any text/html docs without doctypes) - if there's no xmlns attribute on the first element, assume HTML 4 transitional (and whine about the missing doctype) > I was afraid this was due to bugs in my DOCTYPE guessing code, > but I see from the cvsweb log that is from the changes in 1.58. > We really do need committ reports sent to a mailinglist > somewhere, Gerald. If you need a hand in setting it up on > dev.w3.org, give me a holler and I'll send you details of how > it's done (it's explained in The Cederquist (CVS manual)). Sorry, I meant to send mail to this list after making the most recent changes, but I finished them at 3am after an all-nighter the night before, and I didn't feel like doing anything besides sleep at that point. :) I set up the CVS notifications just now; future commits will cause a message to sent to this list. I just added this line to the CVSROOT/loginfo file: ^validator mail -s %s www-validator@w3.org > It might also be a good idea to committ to CVS, and run a test > server, _before_ making the code live on validator.w3.org. That > way the peanut gallery can get their two cents in before going > live (and occationally the peanut gallery has a point ;D). I have a test server: http://validator.w3.org:8000/ but in this case we wanted the validator to be ready for the XHTML REC press release last Wed, and I didn't have it ready earlier so there wasn't much time for feedback. :( -- Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@w3.org> +1 617 253 2920 System Administrator http://www.w3.org/People/Gerald/ World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) http://www.w3.org/
Received on Tuesday, 1 February 2000 19:42:58 UTC