Authors response3: The Future Of XHTML

Hello Everyone,
Firstly I must state that I believe W3C is doing an
excellent job on XHTML. That point is NOT in question,
and never shall be. The reason I am being very blunt
with probing question and opinions is the point of the
devil's advocate. From years of mailing list
experience, an indefinate question is rarely answered!

The reason I am raising these points is twofold:-
1. Personal justification, there is a lot about
XML/XHTML I am yet to understand. I am most grateful
for the comments and help I have recieved so far.
2. I wish to help the development of XHTML by sorting
out small problems from the point of view of a public
developer (which I am am).
Please note that 90% of the time that I tell people to
change to XHTML, they either say they can't be
bothered, or they have never heard of it. If they
cannot be bothered, the reason I usually get is: "Oh,
XHTML? That'll never take off".
This is not a good public opinion, and I want to
understand just HOW important XHTML is.

Now to some replies;
Firstly, Mr. Orendorff
>If you use some other encoding than UTF-8 or UTF-16,
your
>XML document must specify that you're doing so. 

OK, I've had three different viewpoints on this now;
can someone please enlighten me.
Mr. Connell said you only need to include the PI for
non UTF-8 documents,
Mr. Orendorff says that it for non UTF-8 or UTF-16
documents,
Mr. Smith says that it is entirely optional, although
it is a good idea to always include it.
What IS the answer?

>Or, more concisely, "get a life" ;-) 

Sorry, I prefer Mr. Smiths reply. lol. What if I said
I was drunk when I wrote it???

>According to RFC 2376, "XML Media Types", it is
correct to
>publish a DTD as text/xml or application/xml content.
><ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2376.txt> The RFC also
has some
>interesting things to say about the character set. It
all seems kind of weird to me. 

But it doesn't validate. It says that no XML documant
can have a DTD outside of the heading. I prefer W3Cs
approach. See Mr. Smiths reply.

Reply to Mr. Smith:
> Sean, just one note first regarding your writing
style. I find it very hard to 
> read your emails because of the odd quoting method
you use and the fact 
> that you do not separate your replies from the
original material. 

Yeah, but there you go. I usually put all quotes in
quote marks, as is universally accepted. Still, just
for you I can change!

> No, the PI is entirely optional. It's presence does
assist 
> an XML parser in determining the format of the
document 
> especially when the file is not being served from a
web 
> server (such as if you save a copy off to your hard
drive 
> and view it off-line). 

This is now the third differing answer I have
recieved. Are you sure?

> When I run the above url thru the HTML
> Help validator I get many, many errors.
> This is not a valid XHTML 1.0 Strict document. 

The validity of my document is not in question here (I
KNOW it doesn't validate, but I don't care as long as
it is well-formed XML). What is in question is the
errors I recieve from the W3C documents when I parse
the URI http://www.wapdesign.org.uk/ at the parser at
http://www.stg.brown.edu/service/xmlvalid/
Please try this and return comments as appropriate.
> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 
> Strict//EN" "DTD/xhtml1-
> strict.dtd"> 
> <html><head><title/></head><body/></html> 
I like that.

> Software is like art

No it isn't - it is much more creative and important!
> > > "A DTD is an XML document." 
> > 
> > Try parsing it then!: 
> With what? 
> http://www.stg.brown.edu/service/xmlvalid/ and IE5
> Given that the next version of WML is supposed to be
> based on XHTML 1.1 I would guess it's beside the 
> point now. 
I haven't heard of that. Do you have any more
details???

My Kindest Regards To All,
Mr. Sean B. Palmer
http://www.wapdesign.org.uk/ (*Invalid XHTML*, ha, ha,
ha)


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Received on Friday, 23 June 2000 11:42:29 UTC