[html-tech-char] XHTML as text/ or application/xml

Hi,

  From section 1.3 of [1],

[...]
  Note that XHTML source can be served as XML (using MIME types
  application/xhtml+xml, application/xml or text/xml) or HTML
  (using the MIME type text/html).
[...]

That seems rather misleading. While it is technically legal to use
application/xml or text/xml for XHTML documents, XHTML user agents
are not required to process such documents like they would process
if it were delivered as application/xhtml+xml, in fact, RFC 3236
points out in section 2

[...]
   It is not recommended that the ".xml" extension (defined in
   [XMLMIME]) be used, as web servers may be configured to
   distribute such content as type "text/xml" or
   "application/xml".  [XMLMIME] discusses the unreliability of
   this approach in section 3.  Of course, should the author
   desire this behaviour, then the ".xml" extension can be used.
[...]

It would further be worth to point out explicitly that text/xml is
at best a problematic type for any type of content due to lack of
conforming implementations (or the undesireable specification that
lead to this situation).

Specifically, it seems unwise to define the phrase "served as XML"
to mean any of the mentioned types, when content is delivered using
the application/xhtml+xml type it is delivered as XHTML 1.x as
opposed to the more general "XML".

Please change the text to reflect this.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-i18n-html-tech-char-20040509/

regards.

Received on Tuesday, 13 July 2004 20:35:39 UTC