Re: Fw: Recently published documents

Well, I'm no fan of <font>, but it is _different_ from <embed> in that with
<font> there are alternative ways of achieving a similar visual result on
browsers you care about, nowadays, in a way that will validate.  And of
course <font> _is_ in XHTML 1.0 Transitional anyway.  (More's the pity!)

Whereas, as I believe this thread has demonstrated, there is no validatable
way of embedding content (Flash/Real/PDF/Quicktime and even, irony of
ironies, Adobe SVG plugin) in an XHTML 1.0 document that will work on _all_
the browsers you care about, today.

<aside>Though I'm not keen on <font>, I reserve my major vitriol for
<basefont>, also in XHTML 1.0 Trans, which is problematic for implementors
because it doesn't "cascade hierarchically".</aside>

You touch on the body attributes also.  There is a similar, but less
serious, problem here because it is not possible to use CSS to tell Netscape
4.7 to use zero width margins.  I believe.  Style "margin: 0" on the body
element doesn't work.

I reckon there are authors out there who want to target browsers including
Netscape 4.7 and Opera 5.x.  And who want to validate their documents
against XHTML 1.0 like DTDs.  And who want to use zero-width margins and to
embed content such as Flash or SVG in a truly cross-browser-compatible
manner.  These people are not accomodated by the official DTDs.

So, <shameless_plug> in my company's forthcoming validating
XHTML/DocBook/WML/XML editor </shameless_plug>, we will be bundling an
"enhanced" version of the XHTML 1.0 DTD with it that supports the <embed>
element and a few other attributes such as marginwidth/marginheight on the
body element (if we can make it an XHTML 1.1 module, we will do it that way,
only I think that may not be possible).    I would prefer if this was not
necessary, but it seems it is.  If anyone can suggest any other attributes
or elements that are also necessary in the "real world", please contact me,
as we would like to include them.

many thanks

nik

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joanne Hunter" <jrhunter@menagerie.tf>
To: <www-html@w3.org>
Sent: 07 August 2002 20:14
Subject: Re: Fw: Recently published documents


>
> The following text was discovered Wednesday 07 August 2002 in a note
> attributed to one ""Nicholas Atkinson" <nik@casawana.com>":
>
> >
> > That's interesting information Jonny, thank you.  I will look forward to
> > that.  Very interesting.
> >
> > However, are you familiar with the expression "jam tomorrow"?!  ;-)
> >
> > Why can't the necessary declarations be added to XHTML 1.0 so that
> > documents containing EMBED (and PARAM etc.) elements can be validated,
> > *today*.[Given that the Object tag is not widely supported today, or on
> > legacy browsers.]
>
> Probably because the <embed> element is the Wrong Way To Do It from this
> perspective, much like <font> and <img> and the attributes in <body> were,
> and we all already learned our lesson about officially pretending that
it's
> okay (read: the four or five years it took for basic stylesheets to get
any
> decent support and recognition).
>
> Adding it to "transitional" would make sense to me, though, since it Is a
> transitional type element. I only personally object 'cause I keep seeing
> folks who say "Okidoki, it validates in Transitional", and pretend all is
> okay and fine and wonderful. See previous comments by others on writing
> documents to specs rather than specs to documents.
>
>
> --
> Joanne Hunter <http://menagerie.tf/~jrhunter/>  Say No to HTML Mail!/"\
>  Of course, I don't know how interesting any of this really is,     \ /
>  but now you've got it in your brain cells so you're stuck with it.  X
>       --Gary Larson                            ASCII Ribbon Campaign/ \
>

Received on Wednesday, 7 August 2002 19:43:49 UTC