Re: xmlns in HTML5

Steven Pemberton wrote:
> ...
>> 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".
> 
> I used to think that too, but then I realised that in the real world it 
> is different. Browsers sniff, and media types are hard-wired into 
> software, rather than being an extension point. You have to row with the 

This is misleading.

(1) Browsers do sniff, but not in this case. If you sent XHTML labeled 
as text/html, the browser indeed processes it as HTML. That's why 
there's so much broken "XHTML" content in the wild; if it indeed would 
be processed as XML, it would fail.

(2) Media types are supported as extension points. I'm successfully 
using that (not for something related *HTML, though).

> oars you have got. As I said, I send documents with media type 
> text/html, not because they are necessarily HTML, but because I want 
> them in the browser.

...because you want them in that browser that doesn't support XHTML.

> I agree that the document gets *processed* as HTML, but the document 
> doesn't magically change type just because it gets sent with a certain 
> media type.

The document itself doesn't have a type. Type information is meta 
information. In HTTP, that is done using the Content-Type header. From 
the filesystem, I assume browsers look at the file name to decide what 
to do (but again, for *HTML, not at the content itself).

> I'm not arguing about processing, I'm arguing about the document. And as 
> far as I am concerned, when it comes to saying what sort of document it 
> is, the author is most certainly normative.

How can the author be normative, when there's no place to send that 
information (except, in HTTP, through the content type)?

BR, Julian

Received on Friday, 17 July 2009 13:04:53 UTC