The compatibility DOCTYPE from Leif Halvard Silli on 2008-11-11 (public-html@w3.org from November 2008)

From: Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no>
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:21:27 +0100
To: HTMLWG <public-html@w3.org>
Message-ID: <49194E97.5090502@malform.no>

Problem:  According to the f2f meeting [1],

   *  "xslt-compat" = misleading (Julian)
   *  "legacy-compat" = more non-cool = better (Hixie)
   *  "compat" = doctype compatible with tools that can't
      generate <!DOCTYPE html> (Anne)

Proposal: Recursive doctype.

	<!DOCTYPE html public "DOCTYPE html">

Alternative proposal: The even more recursive, and very difficult 
to hand author doctype.

	<!DOCTYPE html public "&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;">

This doctype would be super non-cool since you could only safely 
use it with the help of an automatic tool, because:

  * For hand authors to always avoid to decode &lt; and &gt; is 
difficult.
  * Harmful  to write  <!DOCTYPE html public "<!DOCTYPE html>">
(Firefox/Safari/Opera [apparently IE8b2 is an exception] will 
display "> in the beginning of the document. Page still remains in 
strict mode, though.)

Would XSLT tools etc have problems generating such a doctype?

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Nov/0030.html
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Tuesday, 11 November 2008 09:22:14 UTC