Re: Valid XML

>> But there are very specific conformance requirements?  but my  problems 
>> aren't about the authors of content ignoring  specifications, it's about 
>> the authors of User Agents ignoring them  - the XML conformance rules 
>> being the ones in question, no-one ever  attempted to help me with any 
>> arguments to explain that?  Is it  really that indefensible?

>So you are talking about "XHTML 1.0" served as "application/xhtml+xml"

No, the start of the thread, which Bjoern joined was about XML conformance, 
and how Bloglines didn't follow XML conformance ruels.  If you recall it was 
about a problem with an RSS XML document with broken encoding from 
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/buzz.xml [1] which was parsed normally by 
Bloglines (albeit with wrongly interpreted characters) I was asking for help 
in how to ask Bloglines to obey the XML guidelines.  Bjoern was just asking 
for similar help with XHTML guidelines.  Arguments seem rather thin on the 
ground other than "well it works in both browsers so all is okay" which is 
something I can't agree with.  For example I'm embarrassed that I can't show 
the W3's homepage on my pocket device, and I'm not embarrassed for it, it 
doesn't claim to render XHTML, the W3's own XHTML Appendix C guidelines 
state it won't be shown correctly.

>You have the right to send "XHTML 1.0" as text/html.

You only have the right if you follow the Appendix C.  Guidelines, they are 
_not_ being followed by the W3 themselves,  so are you saying the W3 
homepage is wrong here?  Or are you saying something else?

>Here you are stressing out a problem of
>     - WCAG 1.0
>     - Implementation of XML 1.0 in browsers.

>not XHTML 1.0

I'm not stressing on any problem, I was asking a simple question about WCAG 
1.0, and why it's appropriate to ignore the specificaition?  I don't think 
it's appropriate to.

>http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-20041119/
>     I don't see such requirements in WCAG 2.0 WD.

That is a working draft, and has not been reviewed by a great many people, I 
think due to the poor responsiveness of W3 working groups whereby issues are 
only ever addressed at last call, many people, including myself, don't waste 
our time reviewing working drafts, I realise this isn't a good thing, but 
many year old issues against specifications just don't encourage it.

>> The XHTML user agents are also extremely weak - lack of incremental 
>> rendering, bugs which cause valid documents to be marked invalid  and 
>> error messages that only make sense to web-geeks displayed.

>What is an "XHTML User Agent"?

A user agent which claims to render XHTML - most XHTML user agents will also 
render a great many other content-types.

>> By my understanding Mozilla, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, IceBrowser  and 
>> huge numbers of mobile browsers all support XHTML 1.1, indeed I  cannot 
>> think of a user agent that supports XHTML 1.0 that does not  also support 
>> XHTML 1.1.

>a) XHTML 1.1 application/xhtml+xml
>b) XHTML 1.0 application/xhtml+xml
>c) XHTML 1.0 text/html

>Do you mean you don't know any user agents which does a) correctly  and not 
>b) correctly?
>So you are saying some user agents are unable to do a) and b)

No, I'm saying that all that do b), also do a) - so XHTML 1.1 is as 
supported as XHTML 1.0

>Do you know a user agent which is unable to do c) ?

Yes, Internet Explorer 6.0, I gave the file (with corrections) in the 
previous example.  Or if you mean Appendix C documents, then yes, there are 
a number of XHTML only user agents, that do not attempt to render the 
text/html mime-type.

Jim.

[1] incidently the fixed encoding is now rather peculiar with things like
<![CDATA[ Interview with H&aring;kon Wium Lie  ]]> which I believe whilst 
valid XML, is no longer the intended content as RSS user agents should not 
be expanding entities in title's.

Received on Friday, 20 May 2005 18:32:53 UTC