Re: The non-polyglot elephant in the room

On 1/21/13 2:19 PM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>
>
> On 21 January 2013 20:13, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@annevk.nl 
> <mailto:annevk@annevk.nl>> wrote:
>
>     On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 7:24 PM, Kingsley Idehen
>     <kidehen@openlinksw.com <mailto:kidehen@openlinksw.com>> wrote:
>     > Please correct me if my characterization is wrong, but it
>     appears to me that
>     > this entire affair is about content-type (mime type) squatting
>     i.e., trying
>     > to squeeze (X)HTML into content-type: text/html. If this is
>     true, why on
>     > earth would such an endeavor be encouraged by the W3C or its TAG?
>
>     Maybe because XML is listed quite prominently under "What is Web
>     architecture?" in http://www.w3.org/2004/10/27-tag-charter.html though
>     I would consider that particular part of the charter misguided. (It's
>     also not at all practiced these days.)
>
>
> This is a good point, imho.  In 2004 it was perhaps reasonable to make 
> a 'bet' on XML.  However, favouring any one particular serialization 
> potentially lacks future proofing.  However, favouring the principles 
> behind XML, such as namespacing etc.,  makes more sense.
>
> Wikipedia has a reasonably nice write up on this topic:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_data_serialization_formats
>
>
>
>     --
>     http://annevankesteren.nl/
>
>

At this juncture though, my main question is about XHTML or (X)HTML (the 
polyglot) being squeezed into content-type designation: text/html. In 
reality we have two content types with distinct characteristics which 
thereby entails two distinct content-types: text/html (for HTML) and 
application/xhtml+xml (for XHTML).

Put differently, there is no content-type for the (X)HTML polyglot. 
Thus, we have the struggle right now which is all about trying to make 
text/html the designated content-type for the aforementioned polyglot.

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
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