Somewhat TAN: Re: HTML Tidy XHTML pages are failing to display in Mozilla M14

Hope [author's name withheld] doesn't mind that I posted this to the list,
but it's an important point and a good question.

> I'm wondering if it is possible to <!-- /* "comment
> out the xml declaration" */--> will this make the
> pages display properly/ would it still be valid XML?

Tried that.  Doesn't help.  For Moz M14, you have to delete the namespace
and the XML declaration - just commenting them out doesn't help.  For MSIE
4.5 Mac, you have to delete the XML declaration; just commenting out doesn't
help (as I discovered today):

[quote]

Friend,

When I try to log onto [website name deleted], I see the following text
instead of the
intended page display (Internet Explorer 4.5):

<!-- <?xml version="1.0"?> -->
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html-in-xml/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/Profiles/xhtml1-transitional">
  <head>
    <title>[Deleted]
    </title>
    <base href="http://[Deleted]/html/index.htm" />
    <!-- XHTML version by P. T. Rourke, Technical Publications, [Deleted]
Inc., 30 November 1999               -->
  </head>
  <body [...]

[/quote]

et cetera ad nauseam ad infinitum.  Note the date in the comment; page
hadn't changed since then.  I realize that this is an old version of the
declarations, but I've tried the new versions on the XHTML rec at W3C too in
Moz at least; I'll check them out in Mac later.  (There have been other
problems as well, but let's not go there, as they may be my fault).  You
have to actually DELETE the XML declaration for MSIE 4.5 Mac and Mozilla
M14; apparently, you have to comment out the DOCTYPE in MSIE 4.5; and you
have to actually DELETE the namespace and XML declaration (and possibly the
DOCTYPE as well, I only got access to a Mac today and haven't tested all
variations yet) to get it to work in Moz M14.

I got two responses from Moz developers to my bug report that it should be
fixed in current builds (as mentioned on list, it seems to be a well-known
bug), so M15 should be over that hurdle.  I've reported the MSIE 4.5 Mac
bug, so we'll see how they respond to that; there's nothing about it in
their meagre support documentation for MSIE 4.5 that I could find.

So far, noone has complained that well-formedness has any negative effects
on the display of pages in the browser, only the declarations.

This topic may be more appropriate to a markup list (is there an XHTML list?
If so, anyone have the sub info? I want to avoid a "how to I get the text to
blink"-level list).  HTML Tidy is doing its job; the browsers (one of them,
anyway; can't complain too much about a browser that's still in Alpha) are
falling down on theirs.

Sorry,
Patrick Rourke
ptrourke@mediaone.net

Received on Tuesday, 21 March 2000 10:34:51 UTC