about xhtml2

[Steven Noels <st...@outerthought.org>]

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/01/26/in_brief_superbowl_sunday.html

ouch... :-(

</Steven>
-- 
Steven Noels                            http://outerthought.org/
Outerthought - Open Source, Java & XML Competence Support Center
Read my weblog at            http://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/
stevenn at outerthought.org                stevenn at apache.org

Re: about xhtml2

[Miles Elam <mi...@geekspeak.org>]

This is nothing new.  The same has been said at length about CSS and the 
removal of the <font> tag in the Strict models of (X)HTML.

Personally, I think it's an overreaction.  No one is proposing forcing 
others to use XHTML2 when it is released/recommended.  In fact, there 
are many comments on the XHTML2 mailing list that say that there is no 
problem using HTML 4.01 instead if their needs warrant it.  It isn't 
like a software bug fix that's only available in the newer version or 
that browser support for HTML 3.2 is suddenly going to vanish.  Previous 
recommendations are still recommendations.

XHTML2 simply fills a void on the web for semantic markup.  I'd be very 
surprised if editor authors didn't find it orders of magnitude easier to 
write for than previous incarnations of HTML.

That and I don't see why <img /> to <object /> and <br /> to <l /> are 
causing such a fuss.  You have to actually put the XHTML 2.0 doctype in 
your page to reference the new markup.  Don't want to code XHTML 2.0?  
Keep using the HTML 4.01 doctype (or even the HTML 3.2 doctype) and the 
pages work in perpetuity.

Personally, I think that semantics styled by CSS is the way to go and 
XHTML2 is simply codifying this belief, but all of the HTML 3.2 authors 
don't have change their authoring habits if they absolutely don't want 
to.  If only they saw how they could update a site's appearance en masse 
instead of one font tag at a time...

Browsers aren't going to dump earlier specs (99.999% of the web pages 
out there) anytime soon.  Way too many people have their panties up in a 
bunch over this non-issue.  The two (four?) can coexist happily.

- Miles


Steven Noels wrote:

> http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/01/26/in_brief_superbowl_sunday.html
>
> ouch... :-(
>
> </Steven>