Re: xmlns in HTML5 (was: Telecon Agenda- Thursday 1500 UTC)

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009, Steven Pemberton wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:32:19 +0200, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> > On Thu, 16 Jul 2009, Steven Pemberton wrote:
> > > 
> > > So I can send XHTML5 as text/html if I want.
> > 
> > No, you can't. If you send a document as text/html, then _by definition_
> > it is an HTML5 document, not an XHTML5 document. There is no other way to
> > distinguish them than the MIME type.
> 
> I very much disagree. It's my document, I get to say what it is.

Well, the author can say it is anything they want, but that doesn't change 
what it actually is.

It is literally not possible to send XHTML5 as text/html, because as soon 
as you label it as text/html, you are stating "it is HTML".


> Thanks to plugins, javascript, and similar techniques, the documents do 
> what I require of them. When I say "text/html" I don't mean "here comes 
> an HTML document", I mean "I want this in the browser".

Sure. But from the HTML5 spec's persective, if you send a document as 
text/html, then by definition in is HTML5, not XML. The two syntaxes are 
not distinguishable (e.g. <br xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"/> is 
valid in text/html HTML5, with the / and the attribute being ignored by 
the processing requirements; even some of the XHTML 1.x DOCTYPEs are valid 
in text/html HTML5), so there really is nothing but the author to claim 
anything different, and the author isn't normative.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Friday, 17 July 2009 11:35:05 UTC