- From: William F Hammond <hammond@csc.albany.edu>
- Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:43:52 -0400
- To: whatwg@whatwg.org, public-html@w3.org, www-math@w3.org, www-svg@w3.org
Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@MIT.EDU> writes:
>> Or, if that is too hard or too politically difficult,
>> going forward the WG should provide a formula for the front of a
>> document that asks for an xhtml parse.
>
> What is the benefit over using a MIME type as now, though?
1. Many search engines appear not to look at application/xhtml+xml.
So, for example, it is essentially impossible to search for web
pages containing math when they are served in a W3C
standards-compliant way. (Articulate searching within MathML
elements is a separate issue that is too far a reach for now.)
2. Many content providers have reported that they are stranded,
i.e., their contractors who receive the content by "upload" for
subsequent placement under the eye of an http server do not
support application/xhtml+xml.
(And, of course, "text/xml" and "application/xml" are non-specific
mimetypes for which there is no base namespace. They are sane content
channels for web browsers only when display is entirely controlled
with something like CSS.)
-- Bill
Received on Saturday, 19 April 2008 17:44:33 UTC