Re: Please change the current name of the specification to "HTML5 and XHTML5"

James Graham wrote:
> Dean Edridge wrote:
>
>> I've been told recently that the "the spec supports both HTML and 
>> XHTML equally". But I can't see this as being true.
>> For example: How can the spec "support both HTML and XHTML equally" 
>> if HTML5 will become a W3C recommendation but XHTML5 will not?
>
> It seems that there is a certain amount of confusion here. The 
> serialization of the HTML 5 language as XML (which we're calling, at 
> least for the moment, XHTML5) will become a rec along with the rest of 
> the spec. Since this serialization is explicitly mentioned in the 
> charter, it's very unlikely that it will go away.

Actually James it doesn't mention XHTML5 at all in the charter, only 
XHTML. And as far as I can tell, HTML5 will one day become a rec, but I 
can't see XHTML5 becoming a rec.

What I'm talking about here is having "XHTML5" officially recognised by 
the W3C, not just "the XML version of HTML5". So when someone says: "my 
webpage is valid XHTML5". They can actually have something official to 
back them up. If nothing changes people could just say that "XHTML5 
doesn't exist".

Also, if there is no problem here and there's no problem with XHTML5 
becoming a "rec" then why does Karl and other W3C staff not want to use 
the word (see the QA blog: 
http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/01/html5-is-html-and-xml.html ). I think this 
shows some of the problems I'm talking about. Obviously various people 
don't feel comfortable about mentioning the XHTML5 name as it hasn't 
been endorsed by the W3C yet.

People will certainly wonder why a XHTML spec is called "HTML5". But of 
course people that are obviously anti XHTML won't care.

Dean Edridge

Received on Thursday, 1 May 2008 09:19:28 UTC