Re: XHTML 1.0 served as text/html

On Wed, 6 Dec 2006, Philip TAYLOR wrote:

>> Also, as RFC2854 says, «XHTML1 defines a profile of use of XHTML which is 
>> compatible with HTML 4.01 and which may also be labeled as text/html.»
>
> Is this true ?

XHTML is not "compatible with HTML 4.01". A document cannot conform both 
to the HTML 4.01 and to the XHTML 1.0 specification. This follows even 
from the requirements on the DOCTYPE declaration, but from other aspects 
as well.

What the RFC means is probably that XHTML 1.0 documents can be sent to 
_web browsers_ as indicated as HTML documents. The web browsers are called 
"HTML user agents" in euphemistic language, which is rather tragicomic, 
since the idea of sending XHTML to them is based on their _failure_ to 
conform to HTML specifications.

> 	<meta name="..." content="..."  />
>
> Is it not the case that this may appear /within/ the head
> region if interpreted as XHTML, but /terminates/ the head region
> if interpreted as HTML ?

Correct. See http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/empty.html for a long 
explanation.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/