XHTML/XML

Mr. Dagan is correct as usual... but I think Vidiot has got a valid point.
Who's idea was it to break bazillions of docs anyway? With the scope of
work that the W3C does, it is easy enough to criticize something. After
all, you can't make all of the people happy all of the time... But did
they have a meeting and try to decide how, for the first time in history,
a way to piss off ALL factions of web developers? I write all my HTML/XML
in lower case, but I find it a little over the top to tell someone else
they have to change just because someone in the tower thought lowercase
looks a little better.

And before you go and say that semantics should be standard and in XML
case sensitivity is an issue, I would like to say that *any* semantic
language we use should be robust enough to support both and know the
difference. Maybe the developement isn't finished yet, but it really
should. ($0.02)

I personally, in my own personal opinion, believe that the standards body
is making a mistake by trading functionality for standardization. While
they are doing a good job of getting us all to communicate and getting
ready for the hosts of browsers that will support these languages in the
"light devices" market, they seem to be trying to solve problems better
left to software developers. Of course I am a software developer.

Don't worry though, until the browsers stop supporting older DTD's you
should be able to declare something other than XHTML 1.0, which will
render your page with no probs....

-Frank-


Nir Dagan wrote:

> >
> >You've got to be kidding.  There are millions of HTML pages that
> >exist ...   How many CGI
> >scripts exist that will not parse &.
>
> The CGI script will never see the & It is the browser's
> responsibility to parse the XML and send a correct request.
>
> Regards,
> Nir.
>
> At 09:58 PM 1/30/00 -0500, Vidiot wrote:
> >I just printed the XHTML 1.0 document and an floored by the
> >following:
> >
> >   4.2 Element and attribute names must be in lower case.
> >   4.3 For non-empty elements, end tags are required.
> >   4.4 Attribute values must always be quoted.
> >   4.6 Empty Elements.
> >   C.12 Using Ampersands in Attribute Values
> >
> >You've got to be kidding.  There are millions of HTML pages that
> >exist that use case insensitive elements and attribute.  Same
> >thing applies to elements like BASE and BR.  How many CGI
> >scripts exist that will not parse &.
> >
> >Guess I won't be using XHTML/XML any time in the near future.
> >I'll be damned if I am going to go through the 59,524 HTML
> >pages the I currently have and make them XHTML compliant.
> >I do try and do 4.4, but all of my documents are not perfect
> >in that regard.  I prefer CAPS for elements for readability,
> >as I HAND EDIT all of my HTML documents using asWedit.
> >
> >I am totally confused as to why the W3C would go the over-the-top
> >restrictive route.  How are you going to convince people to use
> >XHMTL with so many restrictions?  You certainly haven't convinced
> >me that I should change.  To tell millions of people who create
> >web pages that "by the way, forget everything you ever knew about
> >making web pages" is not going to go over very well at all.
> >
> >Of course, what I wrote above is personal opinion.  But, I am one
> >of millions of web page creators and I am not impressed with
> >XHTML/XML at all.
> >
> >I'll be dead before I go the XHTML route.
> >
> >Mike Brown
> >--
> >e-mail: vidiot@vidiot.com
> >    Bart: Hey, why is it destroying other toys?  Lisa: They must have
> >    programmed it to eliminate the competition.  Bart: You mean like
> >    Microsoft?  Lisa: Exactly.  [The Simpsons - 12/18/99]
> >Visit - URL:http://www.vidiot.com/  (Your link to Star Trek and UPN)
> >
> ===================================
> Nir Dagan
> Assistant Professor of Economics
> Brown University
> Providence, RI
> USA
>
> http://www.nirdagan.com
> mailto:nir@nirdagan.com
> tel:+1-401-863-2145

Received on Monday, 31 January 2000 10:14:31 UTC