Re: XHTML

In article <Pine.WNT.4.10.9907101745060.-931579@uymfdlvk>, Nir Dagan
<nir@nirdagan.com> writes
>An XML browser that does not understand SGML and doesn't have a DTD of
>HTML at hand can still render an xhtml document well if it is served
>as XML and with a stylesheet. It will be unable to display SGMLish HTML.
>
>Thus, reformulation HTML in XML makes it very cheap for XML applications
>to render HTML.


The whole point about HTML is that it shouldn't need a style sheet
because there is a common set of elements which can be understood by a
variety of UAs. If a style sheet is *required* to in order for the UA to
display the file (rather than provide its own style sheet) the beauty of
HTML is lost. Any (CSS) style sheets provided by an author can only ever
be an optional extra.

So UAs which want to handle HTML (or XHTML) will obviously have to be
provided with at least the equivalent of a basic style sheet. And once
that has been done, the added cost of providing the 34.1KB DTD is
negligible.


-- 
George Lund

Received on Saturday, 10 July 1999 11:39:13 UTC