- From: Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
- Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:07:49 -0500
- To: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- CC: "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>, "Dr. Olaf Hoffmann" <Dr.O.Hoffmann@gmx.de>, public-html@w3.org
Leif Halvard Silli wrote: > Tab Atkins Jr., Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:00:32 -0600: > >> 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. > > Interpretation happens at many places/levels: author, OS, editor, Web > server. > >> Files don't carry around an essential >> identity, they obtain one when you > > Indeed, humans also interpret what files are. > >> choose to interpret them in a particular way. >> >> That's why there was never any such thing as "XHTML served as >> text/html". > > So there never were something like "SGML-inspired-HTML served as > text/HTML" either then? OK. I can always buy the argument if you put it > like that. > >> It was always HTML, albeit with some slightly invalid >> syntax inspired by the XHTML syntax which browsers tolerated/ignored. > > I thought you said it was a bag of bits? > > Anyway: The syntax of such a file doesn't suddenly degrade from /being/ > XHTML to being simply /inspired/ by XHTML, just because it is served as > text/HTML. > >> If they served it as application/xhtml+xml, then it would have been >> XHTML. > > Even at that point it is still only a bag of bits. For example: IE > might perform a sniff and interpret it as text/HTML. I'm not seeing much new information on this thread. Is there an intent to produce a bug report on the current specification? If so, how would you like to see it changed? - Sam Ruby
Received on Thursday, 21 January 2010 19:08:19 UTC