- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:00:32 -0600
- To: "Dr. Olaf Hoffmann" <Dr.O.Hoffmann@gmx.de>
- Cc: public-html@w3.org
2010/1/21 Dr. Olaf Hoffmann <Dr.O.Hoffmann@gmx.de>: > Anyway once an author managed to produce some proper XHTML > document it does not mutate suddenly with a legerdemain into > HTML. Just in some cases it is only served as text/html with the known result, > that it cannot (and due to the priority of the server hint should not) > be interpreted as XHTML. If (X)HTML is served as text/plain, surely > it should not be interpreted as (X)HTML either, just because the intention > of the author is obviously, that the audience gets the source code > presented and not interpreted, for example pretty useful for tutorials > (I use this method myself quite often). It doesn't mutate, because it isn't, by itself, an XHTML file. It's a bag of bits. It can be interpreted as XHTML, or HTML, or plaintext, or a bitmap for that matter. Files don't carry around an essential identity, they obtain one when you choose to interpret them in a particular way. That's why there was never any such thing as "XHTML served as text/html". It was always HTML, albeit with some slightly invalid syntax inspired by the XHTML syntax which browsers tolerated/ignored. If they served it as application/xhtml+xml, then it would have been XHTML. Unfortunately, I think we've gone far down the rabbit hole of an irrelevant sidetrack, so it's probably good to stop now. ~TJ
Received on Thursday, 21 January 2010 16:01:20 UTC