Re: Date and time attribute type in conforming XHTML and valid HTML

* Wolfgang.Frech@xenium.de wrote:
>In a conforming XHTML 1.0 document, the value of the
>datetime attribute of the ins element MUST be CDATA,
>because a conforming document must be (XML-)valid with
>respect to one of the XHTML DTDs.

There is no clear, explicit definition for which requirements a data
object must meet in order to be considered a

  * XHTML 1.0 document
  * XHTML 1.0 Strict document
  * valid XHTML 1.0 document
  * valid XHTML 1.0 Strict document
  * conforming XHTML 1.0 document
  * conforming XHTML 1.0 Strict document
  * ...

there are some people claiming there are obvious implicit definitions
for such terms like that a valid XHTML 1.0 Strict document is a valid
XML 1.0 document that has a document type declaration with a public
identifier equivalent to "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN", but there
is no consensus about such interpretations. Section 3.1.1. of the XHTML
1.0 Second Edition Recommendation has a definition for what it calls
"Strictly Conforming XHTML Documents" which is rather vague and
incomplete; and as you correctly point out, due to errors in the
Recommendation that definition does not really provide an answer to
your question either.

If you find this dissatisfactory you wan write to www-html-editor@w3.org
but you should note that maintaining W3C Recommendations is not
mandatory for W3C Working Groups so they might just ignore your comments
and suggestions. If that is dissatisfactory too, you can write to
process-issues@w3.org. The maintainers of the W3C MarkUp Validator have
pretty much the same problems interpreting these specifications as you
do so any help people can provide to improve this situation would be
very welcome.

Received on Monday, 6 September 2004 16:28:30 UTC