Re: HTML/XHTML

On 14/04/07, Schalk Neethling <schalk@alliedbridge.com> wrote:
> There is surely a couple of very interesting discussions going on here
> at the moment and I feel privileged to be part of it. One question I
> have that are confusing people I have spoken two is what is the future
> of XHTML? From what I can read on the charter it seems that this working
> group is involved in both the classic serialized form of HTML as well as
> the XML serialized form i.e. XHTML.
>
> So with that said, a couple of questions:
> 1. Is my assumption above correct.

Yes

> 2. Will the next version of XHTML be (X)HTML5 or XHTML 2.

HTML5's XML serialisation will update XHTML1. As for XHTML2 I guess
that's up to the XHTML2 WG. I can see a real problem if XHTML2 WG
decides to change the XHTML2 namespace to that of XHTML1, because then
we have two distinct, current and possibly (probably) conflicting
specifications for semantics within the same namespace.

> 3. A lot of developers were under the impression that XHTML is the
> future of the web and that HTML will eventually disappear as/when the
> majority of web browsers fully implement the xhtml+xml mime type and one
> can therefore fully utilize XHTML. Of course, as there is now a working
> group officially working on a new functional implementation of a next
> version of HTML this is obviously not the case. So, going forward will
> the HTML spec and the XHTML spec mirror each other with the only
> difference being the serialized form and therefore the parser used to
> parse the code?

As I understand it, the aim is to have identical element and attribute
vocabulary generating the same DOM tree (modulo case sensitivity and
optional elements handling) with two possible serialisations.
-- 
David "liorean" Andersson

Received on Saturday, 14 April 2007 16:49:37 UTC