Re: Understanding the "applicable specifications" clause (was: Re: Decentralised extensibility idea (ISSUE-41))

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