XHTML Invalidity / WML2 / New XHTML 1.1 Attribute

Dear All,
Here are some ideas and questions that I have come up
with of late. Any help greatly appreciated.
Contents:-
1) XHTML STILL INVALID AS XML?
2) WML/WAP-W3C CONVERGANCE
3) NEW "COMMENT" ATTRIBUTE

XHTML STILL INVALID AS XML?
When I parse a valid XHTML document
(http://www.waptechinfo.com/) in the Brown XML
validator, I come up with the following errors from
the W3C documents:-
line 38,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd: 
error (771): malformed external parameter entity;
file:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml-special.ent,
line 29 
line 39,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd: 
error (775): unbalanced '<' and '>' characters in
parameter entity replacement text: HTMLspecial 
line 39,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd: 
error (461): character-entity reference in DTD not in
entity or attribute value: &#38; 
line 39,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd: 
error (461): character-entity reference in DTD not in
entity or attribute value: &#60; 
line 39,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd: 
error (841): extra material in entity declaration:
(after quote) 
line 39,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd: 
error (466): apparent character data where markup is
expected: > 
line 316,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd: 
error (584): attribute type must be enumerated
(default|preserve): xml:space 
line 326,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd: 
error (584): attribute type must be enumerated
(default|preserve): xml:space 
line 457,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd: 
error (584): attribute type must be enumerated
(default|preserve): xml:space 

Any thought on these yet? Will these be resolved? Is
there even any problem; is it something to do with the
parser?

WML/WAP-W3C CONVERGANCE
Mr. Raggett:-
Thank you for the info. you have provided here.
I am very glad that the W3C is taking an interest into
the wireless internet further to the previous HDML
spec.
I noticed that the term WML2 was used in your original
message
(http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2000Jul/0014.html);
is this to be the official term for the new
spec. of WML (?) - I believe we are at WML 1.2 now,
although it is not widely supported.
WAP is my main area of interest (see
http://www.wapdesign.org.uk/), so the following two
points are some that have been raised time and time
again to me, I would be grateful to hear your
comments:-
1) Now that the W3C is starting to collaborate with 
WAP Forum, can we assume that there will be stricter
monitoring of WAP browser applications (that in the
past have almost completely ignored the WAP Forum
official specifications)?
2) Will there be ANY involvement at all from the
general public? By this I mean businesses who cannot
afford to joibn WAP Forum, or do not do so because
they believe that WAP is doomed to failure? (There are
some!)

NEW "COMMENT" ATTRIBUTE
Here is a thought that has been exciting me for quite
a long time now; a new attribute in XHTML 1.1;
"comment". (As in comment="comment", see below for
examples).
Basically, I want to know what everyone thinks of this
idea:-
In the WCAG WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
1.0, it states "Ensure that documents are clear and
simple", of which a document also means source code.
And the XML spec. says that XHTML (an XML language)
should be human readable. Have you ever found it
frustrating to look at someones source code and think
"why on earth did they put that there?". Also, when
you make your own files, don't you ever wish you could
put a comment directly into an element, rather than
having it commented outside in the usual manner.
For example, say you had two hr lines; one was red and
one was blue. You might do something like:-
<hr style="color:blue;" />
<hr style="color:red;" />

Then, if you change one of them, you might want to put
a note in to inform your collegues, or yourself at a
later date:-
<hr style="color:green;" />
<!-- used to be color:blue -->
<hr style="color:red;" />

But which one used to be blue? In this case you should
write;
<hr style="color:green;" />
<!-- The hr element above used to be color:blue -->
<hr style="color:red;" />

This gets comlicated if you have a large and
complicated page with many colours.
Wouldn't it be great to have something like this:-
<hr style="color:green;" comment="was blue" />
<hr style="color:red;" />

So much simpler!!!
There are so many possible uses for this attribute:-
<hr comment="remove as appropriate" />
<p comment="spell check">The fuios used too bee a very
greate ship</p>
<br comment="space filler" />
In ASP <img alt="whatever" comment="shouldn't show in
lynx" ...
<p comment="sanskrit translation">...</p>
<div comment="generated from XML source">
<a href...
</div>

Of course, most of you will say "why can't you use the
id name or title attributes". The answer is that none
of these are actually designed to do the job that I
have specified (except maybe title="sanskrit
translation"). But you couldn't have title="spell
check", althouh you could have title="Text".

I would greatly appreciate anyone's thoughts (but
especially those members of W3C that work on XHTML). 
I am sure this is a very useful and much needed tag
that would improve the stucture and layout of an XHTML
document. I think that things like this have already
been mentioned, but nothing this specific...let me
know!
What are the odds that this attribute will appear in
XHTML 1.1? 1000:1???
Still, it would be nice...
It could be added simply to coreattrs as
follows:-
<!ENTITY % coreattrs
 "id          ID             #IMPLIED  --
document-wide unique id --
  class       CDATA          #IMPLIED  --
space-separated list of classes --
  comment     CDATA          #IMPLIED  -- element
specific comment --
  style       %StyleSheet;   #IMPLIED  -- associated
style info --
  title       %Text;         #IMPLIED  -- advisory
title --"
  >
Kindest Regards To All,
Sean B. Palmer
WAP Tech Info - http://www.waptechinfo.com/



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Received on Friday, 11 August 2000 06:25:37 UTC