Re: Why DOCTYPE Declarations for XHTML?

John Cowan wrote:
> 
> Ann Navarro wrote:
> 
> > Why would an entire language be deprecated?
> 
> Typically, new versions of a spec implicitly
> deprecate old ones:  a new C compiler that
> didn't do ANSI C would be thought rather odd.

This isn't a programming language or a software application, it's a
markup language. The idea is that documents don't become obsolete.
 
> XHTML 1.0 and XHTML 1.1 don't seem to have that
> relationship: one is "monolithic" and the other is
> "modular".

The actual entity/file structure is irrelevant to the parsed DTD. I
normalize all my modular DTDs to a single file when I use them, ie.,
"modular" becomes "monolithic" in use, and I believe all of our 
modular XHTML DTD distributions include the normalized version too.

And as Ann correctly pointed out, there's no reason to use any more
HTML than you need. If HTML 2.0 suffices, use HTML 2.0. The point is,
everything from 2.0 on forward through XHTML 1.1 may be delivered as
'text/html' with a pretty good guarantee of interoperability. 

All of these doctypes may be used to create HTML documents:

   HTML 2.0
   HTML 3.2
   HTML 4.0
   ISO/IEC 15445:1998 (ISO-HTML)
   HTML 4.01
   XHTML 1.0 Strict
   XHTML 1.0 Transitional
   XHTML 1.0 Frameset
   XHTML 1.1
   XHTML Basic 1.0
   XHTML Minimal 1.0*
   XHTML 1.1 Legacy*

None are deprecated, all are useful and functional. ISO believes ISO HTML
to have a life of up to 25 years.

Murray

* not official releases, but easily created. The XHTML Legacy DTD is a 
  combination of Transitional and Frameset, XHTML Minimal can be created
  by IGNOREing the Tables, Forms and Images modules in XHTML Basic. Both
  are safely deliverable as 'text/html'.
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim                                   <mailto:altheim@sonic.net>
Member of Technical Staff, Tools Development & Support
Sun Microsystems, Inc. MS MPK17-102
1601 Willow Rd., Menlo Park, California 94025  <mailto:altheim@eng.sun.com>

   the honey bee is sad and cross and wicked as a weasel
   and when she perches on you boss she leaves a little measle -- archy

Received on Saturday, 15 January 2000 01:06:04 UTC