Re: Is this legal XHTML 1.1?

At 5:12 AM +0000 12/9/02, Ian Hickson wrote:


>>  Where exactly does it say that?
>
>It says it in the same place where it says that it is illegal to send
>XHTML1.1 as image/png.

In other words RFC 2854? I don't see such wording.  2854 leaves a lot 
of room for things that don't adhere to HTML 3.2 to be labeled as 
text/html, including, explicitly, XHTML.


>Also, text/html's RFC [1] only says "In addition, [XHTML1] defines a
>profile of use of XHTML which is compatible with HTML 4.01 and which may
>also be labeled as text/html", which references to a profile of XHTML 1.0,
>not 1.1, which, in addition, bans internal subsets [2].

No, internal subsets are not banned. Rule 5 states, "The DTD subset 
must not be used to override any parameter entities in the DTD.." 
However, this does not prevent, for example, defining entity 
references in the internal DTD subset.  It also does not prevent 
declaring elements and attributes, though that would make the 
document non-strictly conforming if such elements or attributes were 
actually used.

And of course section 3.2 explicitly blesses mixing up XHTML with 
other namespaces, even though these documents are not strictly 
conforming. It doesn't say anything about what the proper MIME type 
is for them, though.

I don't think there's anything in the RFCs or the XHTML specs that 
really addresses this. However, I did just find XHTML Media Types as 
a W3C Note from August 1.  <http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/> 
This is actually on point, and states

This document summarizes the best current practice for using various 
Internet media types for serving various XHTML Family documents. In 
summary, 'application/xhtml+xml' SHOULD be used for XHTML Family 
documents, and the use of 'text/html' SHOULD be limited to 
HTML-compatible XHTML 1.0 documents. 'application/xml' and 'text/xml' 
MAY also be used, but whenever appropriate, 'application/xhtml+xml' 
SHOULD be used rather than those generic XML media types.

It's still only a note, and says "SHOULD" rather than "MUST", but at 
least it indicates the thinking.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
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|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
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Received on Monday, 9 December 2002 10:02:03 UTC