- From: Mike Schinkel <mikeschinkel@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:41:33 -0500
Hi All: Being new to this list, I've been following this thread with interest and have some questions and comments: As for my questions: 1.) I read the FAQ http://blog.whatwg.org/faq/ and it seemed to imply that HTML 5 and XHTML where not at odds with each other? Did I misread that, because from comments on this thread I get the impression that might not be the case. 2.) A similar question, but is the goal for HTML5 and XHTML to slowly converge, or is the goal for them to diverage? If the former, it would seem that Sam's proposal makes a heck of a lot of sense. If the latter, I would ask why? Why would you want to create two different standards to choose between? Why create a fork in the road where whichever branch you take means you'll never be taking the other one (w/o a lot of backtracking anyway.) If they are converging, there's no need to fear which road to take because both will eventually get you to the same place. As for confusion vs creating a problem, from my seven years experience as a programming instructor and course material author I would look at it like this: 1.) Don't support trailing slashes, and now people have to be taught how to fix it. That requires active effort and active understanding which is likely to cause more than a bit of confusion because it is different than what was accepted before and because it is different than XHTML. They will wonder about the difference with 99.9% of them never reading these archives and probably >99% of them never getting a full explanation. Hence significant confusion among a large number of people who are attempting to validate with ongoing confusion between what works for HTML and what works for XHTML when ironically the goal was to reduce confusion. 2.) Do support trailing slashes. Everything just works fot everybody: Validates fine for people who don't use trailing slashes. Validates fine for people who do using trailing slashes. Most people never even notice the inconsistency (lack of consistency is not a problem for most people unless it stops them from otherwise doing something. That's partly why so many salespeople so easily paint so many technical people into corners when they promise a world that actually can't be delivered. But I digress... :) A few people would notice the inconsistency, but most of them are of the mind to understand the explanation. For those who aren't, they can just be told one of the following: 1.) "Well, the designers chose that to be consistent with both HTML and XHTML since it doesn't otherwise cause a problem," or 2.) "The trailing slash is optional for the singleton elements only, as they are the only ones where it's applicable," OR MUCH MORE LIKELY: 3.) "Uh, don't worry about it. It doesn't really matter. Works either way." Given answer #3, I can almost guarantee you that 99% of people told #3 will be happy as a clam with the answer and just go about their business, totally unconfused. Most people won't care enough to evaluate the inconsistancy any further, as long as it's not causing them any problems. (this again from my seven years experience training programmers.) JMTCW IMHO, anyway. :) A final reason to support trailing slashes is for people who, like me, plan to one day fully support XHTML even though that plan may ultimately never materialize. :) Oh, one last thing. I recently chose to use WordPress because, after working with several others and being less than happy with them (dasBlog, Community Server, and TypePad) it appeared that WordPress was by far the best when it came to standards and supporting new and useful features. And I was very happy with the decision. Now, after reading this thread, I'm thoroughly depressed with respect to WordPress. FWIW. :-( -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/ P.S. Hi Sam, you might recognize my name as the founder and former president of VBxtras/Xtras.Net, here reincarnated in a new form. :)
Received on Thursday, 30 November 2006 05:41:33 UTC