Re: The Future Of XHTML

> 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?

Quoting from http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml :

] Parsed entities which are stored in an encoding other
] than UTF-8 or UTF-16 must begin with a text declaration
] containing an encoding declaration[.]


> >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.

Actually the W3C's approach is to defer everything
having to do with content types to the RFC editors.
The XML Recommendation explicitly defers to the RFCs on
this matter.

I wasn't aware that the RFC on XML media types is
being revised, though.  I think that's a good idea.


> Yeah, but there you go. I usually put all quotes in
> quote marks, as is universally accepted.

...everywhere except in computer e-mail systems, dating
back to the seventies...


> > 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).

In that case, please move this discussion to an XML
mailing list.

Some errors are coming from the xml:space (preserve)
thing, which is a quirk in the XHTML DTD resulting from
the XML spec being a little bit ambiguous on whether
that's actually allowed.  Some XML parsers refuse to
accept a DTD that says

   <!ATTLIST ...
     xml:space (preserve)       #FIXED 'preserve'
   >

because the XML spec says that the attribute "must be
given as an enumerated type whose only possible values
are 'default' and 'preserve'." For example:

   <!ATTLIST ...
     xml:space (default|preserve)  #FIXED 'preserve'
   >

This is discussed in the www-html archives somewhere.

The quirk is being carried forward into XHTML 1.1
as of the latest draft.

-- 
Jason Orendorff

Received on Friday, 23 June 2000 17:12:42 UTC