XHTML 1.0 Second Edition and the XHTML MIME Type

Assuming that the Internet Engineering Steering Group approves of the
'application/xhtml+xml' media type registration, I would suggest that
some mention of it is made in XHTML 1.0 Second Edition.

Section 5.1 (Internet Media Type) could have the sentence "This
document makes no recommendation about MIME labeling of other XHTML
documents" removed.  An additional paragraph could added along the lines
of:

    "In order to be parsed in an XML-conformant user agent, such as an
    XHTML browser, the Internet Media Type 'application/xhtml+xml'
    should be used.  As a format based on XML, the '+xml' suffix
    identifies the document to XML browsers with no in-built knowledge
    of XHTML."

Appendix C.11 (Document Object Model and XHTML) should also be updated
accordingly:

    "2. Applications that access XHTML documents served as Internet
    media types application/xhtml+xml, application/xml or text/xml can
    also use the XML DOM..."

Lastly of course the new RFC would need to be added to Appendix E.  ;o)

IMHO adding this to the XHTML 1.0 Second Edition Recommendation, rather
than leaving mention of the new media type until XHTML 2.0, would save
significant confusion in the future.

Thanks,

Dave

Received on Tuesday, 9 October 2001 16:14:12 UTC