Re: Question about XHTML 2.0 and content type

Jim Ley wrote:
> "Lachlan Hunt" <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au> wrote in message 
> news:43E1E547.1080204@lachy.id.au...
>> Jim Ley wrote:
>>> XHTML should get a diferent mime-type than application/xhtml+xml
>>> otherwise we cannot content-negotiate it with clients that support
>>> XHTML 1.1 but not 2.0.
>> There is an optional profile parameter defined for application/xhtml+xml 
>> in RFC 3236.  Besides stating that it accepts a URI, it's currently not 
>> defined very well except to say that it's designed for content 
>> negotiation.  The example in the RFC uses the URI of the XHTML Basic DTD, 
>> although using the namespace URI, since it's different from XHTML 1.x, 
>> might be a better alternative.
> 
> So the idea is that XHTML 2.0 user agents will send accept headers something 
> like this:
> 
> accept: application/xhtml+xml; q=1; 
> profile=http://www.w3.org/2006/02/xhtml-basic, application/xhtml+xml; q=0.9; 
> profile=http://www.w3.org/2006/02/xhtml-print, application/xhtml+xml; q=0.5; 
> profile=http://www.w3.org/2006/02/xhtml
> 
> etc.?

No, not quite what I intended.  XHTML Basic and Print both use the same 
namespace as XHTML 1.x (since, AIUI, they're just subsets), so if the UA 
supports XHTML 1.x, there is no need to explicitly state that they 
support the basic and print profiles.

Accept: application/xhtml+xml,
application/xhtml+xml;profile="http://www.w3.org/2002/06/xhtml2/",
text/html;q=0.9,...

It is a little bit long, but only marginally longer than adding a new 
media type like application/xhtml2+xml.  It might be nice if there were 
some kind of version parameter added to the existing MIME type that just 
accepted a short version number (perhaps like the yet to be defined 
version attribute in the XHTML 2 draft); or better yet, just let XHTML 2 
be backwards compatible with XHTML 1.x and use the same namespace and 
same MIME type.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Thursday, 2 February 2006 13:53:59 UTC