Re: text/html for xml extensions of XHTML

Hi David,

> white space is not allowed before the XML declaration.
> If you were going to do this testing I'd _only_ test for 
> that and only test the first few characters.

Is anything allowed before the XML declaration?  I am pursuing the
idea of a "magic comment" or something of that sort that would say "In
a perfect would I would have been shipped as text/xml. Please help
me!"

> The comment that <?xml upsets some HTML browsers isn't really
> applicable if it is being added specifically to flag the document needs
> an xml parser.
> 
> It would be nice if Mozilla could do this, although I agree that it
> would be nicer still if IE would recognise XHTML files served as XML.

I argue that both things should happen to pave the way for authors to
transition to using predominantly XHTML.  Obviously IE needs to fix
the problem, or its hopeless.  But assuming they do, lots of authors
will still have trouble because

1) their documents get shipped as text/html due to circumstances
   beyond their control

2) they obstinately send their documents as text/html in order to get
   them to at least sort of render in old browsers.

To address this category of problems, I think something an author
could put into the actual document to tell a new user agent to use the
text/xml MIME type would be very nice.

--Robert

------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Miner                                    RobertM@dessci.com
MathML 2.0 Specification Co-editor                    651-223-2883
Design Science, Inc.   "How Science Communicates"   www.dessci.com
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Received on Wednesday, 2 May 2001 11:53:43 UTC