Re: text/html for xml extensions of XHTML

Let's try to get some facts into this discussion. 

Fire up mozilla 0.8.1 and visit the URL(s)
http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/htmltab.html and all permutations
replacing "html" with "xml". The document codifies the results. What this
test shows is:

1. Mozilla already routinely DOES snooping in the document header, notably
the DOCTYPE, that changes its rendering, when the document is served as
HTML. This fact renders Hickson's many remarks about the excessive
computational cost of snooping irrelevant (to put it charitably). 

2. When Mozilla receives a document served as XML its behaviour does not
seem to depend on the DOCTYPE.

[3. Both Mozilla, when rendering a document it takes to be XML, and Amaya
have broken table renderers.]

I assume that conclusion 1 above shows that it ought to be fairly trivial
for Mozilla to implement the detection of XML documents served as HTML on
the basis of their DOCTYPE, and enable the MathML parser for them.

Ian Hutchinson.

On Thu, 3 May 2001, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Thu, 3 May 2001, Robert Miner wrote:
> >
> > If not, you need to give me some sign that you actually understand the
> > issues at stake.  From what you write, you give the clear impression
> > that you don't think either of the following issues are important:
> >
> > 1) For some time to come, most web authors will be preparing content
> >    that will be read predominantly with older user agents, and
> >    therefore need to send documents as text/html.
> >
> > 2) For some time to come, many web authors will end up sending XHTML
> >    as text/html due to circumstances beyond their control, even if
> >    they are willing to send it as text/xml.
> 
> I acknowledge those points completely. Neither of these points require any
> documents sent as text/html to be handled as text/xml by any browser.
> 
> 
> > If you do acknowledge those points, then you don't need me to point
> > out why your analogy with PNGs is not very relevant.
> 
> My analogy with PNGs is merely to highlight that content type sniffing is
> fundamentally flawed.
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 3 May 2001 21:51:41 UTC