Re: polyglot XHTML/HTML and <!DOCTYPE html about:legacy-compat>

On Jan 2, 2010, at 23:49, Larry Masinter wrote:

> I understand the XSLT use case. I am asking very specifically
> about the XML-editor-being-used-for-XHTML-then-served-as-html
> use case, and gave seven URLs for documentation about (different?)
> XML editors which allude to using the DOCTYPE declaration to
> control the XML editor's behavior.
> 
>> Welcome in a real world ;-)
> 
> My "real world" includes 
> XML-editor-being-used-for-XHTML-then-served-as-html.

Using a generic XML editor for editing content that gets served as text/html is unsafe regardless of doctype issues. An editor needs a non-generic text/html-aware serializer anyway to deal with void vs. non-void elements and <pre> reasonably. When a fully generic XML editor is used to edit text/html content, the user is already in the process of operating a foot gun.

Therefore, I think the premise of the use case is faulty and the spec doesn't need to support the use case.

(Once the editor is non-generic enough to know *something* about text/html considerations, it might as well allow the use of <!DOCTYPE html> without ill effects. OTOH, an editor that doesn't allow <!DOCTYPE html> isn't a generic XML editor to begin with, because <!DOCTYPE html> is permitted in XML regardless of entity resolver configuration.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Monday, 4 January 2010 10:11:25 UTC