Re: [wgo] XHTML1.0 Strict vs HTML 4.01

[Sigurd Gartmann <sigurdga-gnome-web-list brogar org>]

> Quim Gil <qgil desdeamericaconamor org> 2006-11-25 20:24:

> Another concern about the *HTML* encoding to be used in wgo:
> 
> RickyZhou says at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/WebPolicies
> 
> "It isn't practical to require XHTML, since it would have to be sent as
> text/html to support IE. In doing so, it becomes impossible to take
> advantage of its features, as all browsers would simply render it as
> malformed HTML. Overall, I recommend HTML 4.01 Strict for maximal
> support. Some links that explain this debate in more detail:
> http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml and
> http://www.webstandards.org/learn/articles/askw3c/sep2003/ "

We are not the first project to adapt the "new" xhtml standard,
and Curtis and Christian have already elaborated on some of the
most important parts, but I have some more general comments on
the articles:

http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml
complains a lot about authors not knowing what they are doing.
This is not relevant since we know more than the average xhtml
author out there on how to make standard compliant web pages.
And the tools we choose, or already have chosen, also makes
standard compliant web pages.

I was surprised about browsers not being xhtml user agents
(yet?). However, these arguments should not make us write old
style web pages instead of following a standard that browsers
potentially may follow later.

The conclusion in the webkit blog (from this year), linked in
from the top of hixie-xhtml article:
http://webkit.org/blog/?p=68
says that most of the time, the difference does not matter, but
sometimes it does, and it want us to make sure we know the
difference. This discussion and the articles and blogs have
given us (at least me) more insight on the potential problems.


Sigurd Gartmann