Re: WASP asks the W3 XHTML 1.0 or HTML 4.01

"Karl Dubost" <karl@w3.org>

>Le jeudi, 30 oct 2003, à 12:55 America/Montreal, Jim Ley a écrit :
>> http://www.webstandards.org/learn/askw3c/oct2003.html

>First of all, I want people read clearly something:

>"""C. HTML Compatibility Guidelines
>This appendix is informative."""

>The whole C Appendix is not normative at all.

|Section 5 "This section is normative."
|
| 5.1 XHTML Documents which follow the guidelines set
| forth in Appendix C, "HTML Compatibility Guidelines"
| may be labeled with the Internet Media Type "text/html"
| [RFC2854],

All my comments are in the context of XHTML as text/html, as the previous
WASP asks the W3 stated it was relevant.  It is clear from both the
normative section 5.1 and RFC 2854 that following the rules of Appendix C is
required if you're serving it as text/html

http://www.webstandards.org/learn/askw3c/sep2003.html also makes this clear.
If the current document wishes to ignore this advice and is recommending
XHTML served with the correct mime-type then it needs to make this clear.

>Agreed. I don't often put a space in my own pages. I even tend to
>avoid it.

I hope you do not serve it as text/html - can you please correct the
document.

>As you said it's not an error and "The value of the xml:lang attribute
>takes precedence." It's again the choice of the user.

If serving it as text/html - the author does not have such a choice.

>There's no such thing as "Appendix C compliance". It's a strong and
>wrong abuse of words for the meaning of the spec.

So what would you suggest I use to describe following the rules of the
profile of XHTML defined in Appendix C that can be used if serving the
content as text/html - because that's much too much of a mouthful.  Appendix
C compliance appears to be well understood even if not strictly accurate.

>> This is not allowed under Appendix C. which requires that xml:lang and
>> lang be duplicated.
>
>Appendix C doesn't require. The section is informative.

"RFC 2854 and Section 5.1 of the XHTML 1.0 specification require that
xml:lang and lang be duplicated if serving the document as text/html?"

Is that acceptable wording?

> I don't understand this comment

It seems quite clear, in HTML4.01 script is defined as CDATA, therefore
<!-- --> does not denote a comment, in XHTML 1.0 it's defined as PCDATA
therefore <!-- --> defines a comment.  This is a change of semantics of an
otherwise equivalent document

>> Enough of the errors, although they need fixing before the rest of the
>
>not so many errors finally.

I don't think any of them have been refuted, just my language needed
clarification.

>The benefits are the ones listed all along the article for people who
>need it. The points of the article is certainly to not make the switch
>a requirement, but just a choice.

I'm sorry I didn't see any - and the document does not make it clear that
there is a choice, there's a distinct bias towards XHTML.

> Nobody is bad because they
>still use HTML 4.01. Both solutions are perfectly usable.

Could you please clarify the document to make this clear, it does not make
this clear currently.

>A detailed warning analysis of the Markup validator, it would be nice
>to do. As you know, Jim, Markup validator is made by volunteers like
>Terje, Nick, Bjoern, and I'm pretty sur such a detail analysis for a
>future warning mode would be very helpful. Giving your knowledge and
>your strictness on the HTML specifications, it would be a valuable work
>for the Web community.

Certainly unfortunately my programming skills are not appropriate to develop
Perl or C code that the validator is using, my current knowledge is in
javascript, and here, I can only offer the validator the skills I have, I
also test the beta version of the validator, if you look at the beta version
of the validator you will javascript I have contributed aswell as the
bookmarklet at http://validator.w3.org/favelets.html.  If I could help more
I would gladly do it, unfortunately learning Perl is not an option, but any
other javascript enhancements or bookmarklets just put in a request I'll
gladly do them.   In any case it's debateable if the Markup validator is the
right place for this, Certainly Jukka Korpela and Alan would be anti such
behaviour, I'm not sure, I'd rather see a seperate tool, but can appreciate
that being within the validator would be useful.

Really though unfortunately all I can offer the validator is cheerleading
support to Terje and Nick in IRC.

>Yes it's a problem of the specification now. Appendix C is not
>normative.

Yet if we want to serve it as text/html (which it seems the W3 does want)
then Appendix C is required, it may be not be normative to  XHTML but you
certainly have to follow it for text/html.

If the article is not intended to be read with reference to Appendix C.
Then I think this needs to made clear, as long as you make it clear the
discussion is limited to xhtml served as "application/xhtml+xml" then the
article is extremely good.

Jim.

Received on Friday, 31 October 2003 10:39:31 UTC