Authors response: The Future Of XHTML

Hello Again,
Firslty I shall addres the concerns of Mr. Hufthammer
and Mr. Connolly.
The problem lies in one of the entity documents, I get
errors when I run an XHTML document through (for
example) http://www.stg.brown.edu/service/xmlvalid/
which is known to be an excellent validator.
Another intersting point is that the W3C hompage
doesn't have an XML tag in it! Why is this? The XHTML
recommendation clearly states the example document as
having a <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> tag in
front of it. Indeed, the very recommendation itself
states that it is "A Reformulation of HTML 4 in XML
1.0", but the recommendation page doesnt have an XML
tag in it!!! I'm sure there is a logical explanation
for this, I just don't see it yet!
I realise that the W3C validator isn't working
properly. However, even REAL valid XHTML pages dont
validate as XML because the problem lies with one of
the documents refered to in the XHTML DTD.
For your benefit, here is the result of the
afforementioned parser on my webpage:-
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 
Maybe this is a problem with their parser and not the
DTD code!!!!!

Mr. Shell Hung responed to my message with the
following (quote)
"XHTML cannot be a pure XML Language"
The recommendation says it is, and therefore it should
be. W3C can do whatever they wish anywa, so they CAN
make XHTML a valid XML language. Anything is within
their power, I have complete faith in them. They
worked wonders with HTML...
He goes on to say:
"The future XHTML will be replaced by XML, isn't it?"
But XHTML is a much needed subset of XML.You cant go
about defining whatever tags you want because browsers
wont recognize them! XHTML gives a way of letting the
browsers know what we want displaed, whilst also
having the extensibility of XML.
Thank you for pointing out theat ASP and HTML are not
alike. This is a good point and I have no idea why I
compared their growth.
Mr. Graham:
"I believe that Sean is seeing a bug in the W3C HTML
validator -
It appears to have problems with XHTML that is
processed as
text/xml as opposed to text/html"
I don't doubt this, but most documents I put through
it are of MIME type text/html (I could try other with
PHP/ASP scripts).

Gentlemen, I look forward to your respective replies.
Does anyone have any further comments about the
"Imagine" section of my original message?
B.T.W. I know this is a question for the wrong list,
but how is the Validation service going to cope with
the modules of XHTML 1.1

A big question for this list:
WHEN IS XHTML 1.1 going to become an official
recommendation? Any clues? I know it is in it's last
call, i'm just anxious!

Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
Director - WapDesign ORG U.K.
http://www.wapdesign.org.uk/
http://www.wapdesign.org.uk/xhtml.html

P.S. Someone please give WAP Forum a shout, their WML
DTD is listed as XML, but it is nothing like it - it's
a DTD not an XML document!


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Received on Thursday, 22 June 2000 17:32:34 UTC