Re: Is the P-word? (Was: TAG Decision on Rescinding the request to the HTML WG to develop a polyglot guide)

David Sheets, Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:03:18 -0800:
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:

> Are there actual semantic consequences to using <meta
> http-equiv="Content-Type" content="application/xhtml+xml" />?

> I want to declare interpretive intent. If an author is interested in
> producing polyglot markup, it seems quite silly to force their
> consumers to make guesses about which methods of interpretation can be
> used. HTTP itself contains an Upgrade facility
> <http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.42> and
> it seems quite logical that a dual format facility should exist for
> local, static resources or representations retrieved with protocols
> that do not support authoritative, out-of-band metadata.
> 
> How does non-conformance to these legacy restrictions hurt anything?

Polyglot markup is always 100% conforming regardless of the 
Content-Type you put on it - text/html (conforming as HTML5) or 
application/xhtml+xml (conforming as XHTML5). To introduce a feature 
that would only be permitted to use when the markup is polyglot, would 
be to deviate from the polyglot principles. It would not be a polyglot 
document anymore. You could of course file a bug that made that tag 
valid in both syntaxes, regardless of polyglotness, but that would 
defeat your purpose with the whole thing. Also, with some possible 
nuances, the feature you propose does not differ much from e.g. the 
XHTML namespace declaration, which is valid both as HTML5 and as 
XHTML5, but which only acts as a namespace declaration (that has an 
effect on the namespace) when served as XML: When served as text/html, 
its presence can be treated as hint that the document possibly uses 
polyglot markup. In other words: Such a hint already exists. So there 
is not a need for yet another hint.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Thursday, 24 January 2013 08:11:12 UTC