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

[Ricky Zhou <ricky zhou gmail com>]

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Note: I don't particularly want to reignite this fiery debate, but I
can't resist responding to some points in this.  Until I can get a much
better understanding of Plone templating and page generation, I won't be
making any assumptions about how difficult converting Plone to HTML will
be, which is why I've stopped pushing this issue (at this point, at
least).

Thilo Pfennig wrote:
> Well http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/#text-html defines:
> ----
> The 'text/html' media type [RFC2854] is primarily for HTML, not for
> XHTML.  In general, this media type is NOT suitable for XHTML.
> However, 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.
> This means that it is absolutely Ok to server XHTML as text/html,
> although it is no recommended. Sure a standard always sets high goals
> - but here they making this exception here, because they know of the
> problems.
This doesn't change the fact that browsers will parse it as HTML.  As
you say, it's not recommended, so why go against recommendations when
there's another perfectly valid standard that we can follow?

> My view is: the whole HTML/web thing keeps being a mess, no matter
> what you do. So it is not possible to make thing 100% perfect. 
Why not just aim for as perfect as possible (and HTML happens to be
perfect for this case, because it is sent and parsed as is meant).

> And at least it is better to try to go to XHTML standard as to stick
> to old school HTML. 
You've stated this, but I don't see any reason.

> I have tried to make perfect standard compliant pages for years but
> at some point I have switched more to the GoodEnough approach. So if
> it works and there is no problem - and if we plan to switch to more
> standard compliance if possible this is ok. Standard compliance
> itself is no value. It should serve the user and not the other way
> around.
See http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/WebPolicies.  I think it's pretty
clear that a standards compliance is a requirement, which I completely
agree with.  Besides, as mentioned, HTML is another solution that's both
"good enough" and avoids the mentioned problems.

> I have not a complete knowledge of XHTML but I think the essence was
> that XHTML forced some things that were free in HTML which were
Obviously, if we were to use HTML, we'd be following these requirements
in our HTML also, not only for consistency and maintainability, but to
facilitate the transition to XHTML when it's appropriate.

> So XHTML mostly is more strict where HTML is very loose. There may be
> some points where interpreting might be different. Maybe you like to
> point them out more specific?
The strictness can and should still be followed by good web developers,
whether they're required by HTML or not.  An example of an XHTML
rendering improvement is that rendering engines could operate more
quickly, as it wouldn't have to handle non-well-formed/invalid markup at
all.  Still, I'm mainly arguing that there's absolutely no benefit to
using XHTML (apart from that Plone uses it), due to the way that all
widely used browsers handle it.

In conclusion, the only reason that I'm not taking this further right
now is that people say that it'd be difficult to change in Plone.
Assuming that there's more to do than change the DOCTYPE and full page
HTML that I see in the template files (tell me, is there?), I can live
with XHTML until I can play around with Plone more.

Thanks (and hoping that 30 people don't pounce on me after I send this),
Ricky
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