RE: Is this legal XHTML 1.1?

Ian Hickson wrote:

> I take a more holistic approach to validity.
> Since changing the MIME type can, for instance, change the
> charset of the document, and thus change its validity, it is
> no stretch to claim that the MIME type of the document has
> some effect on its validity. And since no spec allows XHTML
> 1.1 to be sent as text/html, that would, by taking this
> holistic approach, make the document invalid.

So don't change the charset.  Use ASCII + character references.  That's
still UTF-8. :)  Anyway, you're talking about a perfect world, where
MIME types always match the content.  Agreed, that will ultimately be
the best way to do it.  But we are still in a tag soup (text/html) world
(heck, even "text/javascript" isn't a registered MIME type, nor is
"text/xsl" IIRC, yet look how much is done in the real world with those
today).

But you can process XHTML (of some flavor) documents with XML tools.
Those tools don't work on SGML documents.  You're saying, "Because of
old/broken UAs, don't use XHTML on the web as text/html."  I'm saying,
"Neither the old nor the new UAs care if they receive an XHTML document
as text/html -- they'll process it as tag soup, but it will look fine
(at least as long as you stay away from the more esoteric stuff like
trying to embed MathML)".  And you can author it and process it with the
far more prevalent and exponentially growing XML tools.


/Jelks

Received on Friday, 13 December 2002 19:07:03 UTC