Processing Instructions in XHTML 1.0

Hi,

   The introduction of appendix C in XHTML 1.0 says, the appendix
defines design guidelines for authors who wish their XHTML documents to
render on existing HTML user agents. Section 5.1 says, those guidelines
should be followed in order to label XHTML documents as text/html.
However, section C.1 reads:

  Be aware that processing instructions are rendered on some user
  agents. However, also note that when the XML declaration is not
  included in a document, the document can only use the default
  character encodings UTF-8 or UTF-16.

There is no guideline here, nothing one could follow. All other items of
appendix C have clear imperatives what authors should do, so I suggest
to clearly state whether processing instructions should be avoided or
not.

Further, it's a bad idea to mention the XML declaration in a section on
processing instructions, since it isn't one; at least with the chosen
wording it is misleading; I suggest to add some hint that SGML software
might think of it as an processing instruction.

regards,
-- 
Björn Höhrmann { mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de } http://www.bjoernsworld.de
am Badedeich 7 } Telefon: +49(0)4667/981028 { http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
25899 Dagebüll { PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 } http://www.learn.to/quote/

Received on Wednesday, 15 August 2001 17:46:27 UTC