Re: validator not doing application/xhtml+xml

Masayasu Ishikawa <mimasa@w3.org> wrote:

>[ If you want to continue this discussion, please move to www-html@w3.org.
>  This is no longer a validator's issue. ]

I¹m not subscribed to www-html ATM. A snafu suring migration from an old
email address leaves me unsubscribed to a lot of w3.org lists until I have
time to remedy the situation. Sorry!


>Terje Bless <link@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> >    http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3236.txt
>> 
>> #  This document only registers a new MIME media type,
>> #  'application/xhtml+xml'.  It does not define anything more than is
>> #  required to perform this registration.
>> 
>> This is not progress; this is status quo. The first I-D said as much.
>
>This *is* progress.  Now that 'application/xhtml+xml' appears in
>the IANA MIME Media Types registry [1], and people may officially
>use it, for example, the validator may support it.  That's quite
>different from something just mentioned in an I-D.

On one level, yes, but on the level that matters to us it¹s just status
quo. The RFC registers the MIME type, but it doesn¹t define it. We¹re in
exactly the same situation we were in before; we can¹t implement
application/xhtml+xml because however we treat it there is a chance the
HTML WG will decide to have it mean something else, and we would carry no
authority as the RFC _explicitly_ disclaims having any meaning.

IOW, it¹s there, we just can¹t use it for anything.

[but see below!]


>>Is there reason to believe I will find something more substantive
>>later in that document when I find the time to read the rest of it?
>
>What "substantive" information you are looking for?

A normative definition of what, exactly, can be expected to be the body of
a MIME entity coming to us as application/xhtml+xml.

Now I haven¹t actually read that document (!!!), but the last time I
checked out one of the drafts, it was riddled with language such as:

# With respect to XHTML Modularization [XHTMLMOD] and the existence of
# XHTML based languages (referred to as XHTML family members) that are
# not XHTML 1.0 conformant languages, it is *possible* that
# 'application/xhtml+xml' *may* be used to describe some of these
# documents. However, it should suffice for now for the purposes of
# interoperability that user agents accepting 'application/xhtml+xml'
# content use the user agent conformance rules in [XHTML1].

[ Emphasis added. Those latter are the ill fated ³Appendix C² rules ]
[ from XHTML 1.0.                                                   ]

...and...

# Although conformant 'application/xhtml+xml' interpreters can expect that
# content received is well-formed XML (as defined in [XML]), it cannot be
# guaranteed that the content is valid XHTML (as defined in [XHTML1]).


Without making some huge assumptions, that¹s nowhere near good enough to
support a robust implementation for the Validator. It¹s possible the final
version remedies this -- which is why I¹m asking! -- but I¹m inclined to be
sceptical until convinced otherwise.

Received on Tuesday, 12 February 2002 06:26:55 UTC