- From: Hoffman, Geoffrey <ghoffman@aztrib.com>
- Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:39:31 -0700
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
I think this has been covered, but to summarize my understanding: HTML is much less restrictive than XML/XHTML. An XML parser _MUST_ fail by definition, thus the same will (should) hold with XHTML since it must be well-formed XML. An HTML parser can do whatever it wants... which is (maddeningly) why certain things 'work' in IE and not in [insertOtherBrowserHere] - IE (read: thousands of sloppy M$ programmers) can parse your poorly formed HTML and decide what to do with it (e.g. display it anyway and continue); the reverse is NOT true for XML/XHTML parsers. A simple example is: <select name=color> <option>blue <option>red </select> works fine in most browsers, in a document declared as HTML. If the document is declared as XHTML, you should use: <select name="color"> <option>blue</option> <option>red</option> </select> If the 1st example works in a document declared as XHTML, it would be a deviation from the 'strictness' that XML is supposed to guarantee. As long as there are sloppy parsers, people can continue to write sloppy code that 'works' - I hope eventually the 'Sloppy Code Support' "feature" in current HTML parsers (browsers) will be eradicated, forcing everybody to have well-formed markup. The only impact that can be made on accessibility as we migrate to XHTML is, for example, a Schema that the XHTML document is validated against can be made to _FORCE_ attributes like longdesc (althought this would have to be implemented at the corporate/organizational level as opposed to the internet in general). HTH. Geoff Hoffman
Received on Thursday, 26 June 2003 13:42:20 UTC