Re: Prevalence of ill-formed XHTML

Robert Burns wrote:
> What problems would an author face with actual browsers if they 
> authored valid and well-formed XHTML 1.0 that also adhered to the 
> appendix C guidelines and then delivered that content as text/html? I 
> cannot think of any and I've yet to hear any issues presented (Note that 
> adhering to appendix C means there's no CData sections and <script> is 
> always closed with </script>).

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/guidelines.html doesn't say anything about 
not using CDATA sections.

It does say "Use external style sheets if your style sheet uses < or & 
or ]]> or --. Use external scripts if your script uses < or & or ]]> or 
--" but it doesn't indicate that code like:

   <script type="text/javascript">
   <![CDATA[
   alert("Hello world");
   ]]>
   </script>

is a JS syntax error in text/html, nor that

   <script type="text/javascript">
   if (5 &gt; 2) alert('OK');
   </script>

is a syntax error too.


XHTML code like:
   <textarea>
   Text</textarea>
in Firefox results in "Text" on the second line of the text area. (Opera 
and Safari disagree. I think XHTML5 agrees with Firefox). When you send 
that as text/html, the leading newline will be ignored, so you will get 
data loss when submitting the form.


The checked, disabled, readonly, etc attributes can't be used at all in 
a document that follows Appendix C's advice to work in old UAs.


(I expect there are plenty of other issues - it seems it would be hard 
to write something like Appendix C that is actually correct.)

-- 
Philip Taylor
philip@zaynar.demon.co.uk

Received on Saturday, 1 September 2007 13:32:38 UTC