In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, David Illsley
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 1. Why HTML 4.01 Strict and not XHTML 1.0 Transitional? The latter
> allows the use of code for NS4.x as well as being valid xml(which is
> presumably where its going long-term).
Why not Transitional?
* The content at www.mozilla.org is expressable as Strict. Most of the
time it's just paragraphs, headings, code samples and lists. Stuff
like <center> and align="center" is just old cruft that would be better
handled in style.
* Strict documents work with Nav 4.x. I've made an effort to choose the
basic styles in such a way that the styles don't collide with Nav
4.x's bugs too badly.
* The features of Transitional that aren't in Strict are deprecated.
Using them is considered harmful. Mozilla aims to be a standards-
compliant browser, so let's try to avoid deprecated stuff on the site.
However, if the maintainer of a particular page uses a graphical editor
like Mozilla Editor or Dreamweaver, in that case IMO, it makes sense to
rubber stamp the page valid Transitional rather than Strict that will
risk becoming invalid with the next update.
Why not XHTML?
* XHTML 1.0 doesn't enable to do something we can't do with valid HTML
4.01. There is no immediate need to use SVG or MathML in most of the
www.mozilla.org documents.
* Serving XHTML as text/html only doesn't really make any sense unless
we for some reason were using an XML-based workflow on the content
creation side or server side. (We aren't.)
* Serving XHTML using an XML content type would require a content
negotiation solution if we wanted to also support old browsers. A
content negotiation solution would require extra work and would block
the effort to fix the documents.
* The wrapper only supports HTML 4.x Strict & Transitional. It is
incompatible with XHTML. Making the wrapper support both HTML and XHTML
would require extra code, review of the code and cycles from someone
with enough priviliges to check it in. This would, effectively, block
the effort to fix the documents.
More on serving XHTML as text/html (incomplete draft):
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/xhtml-the-point
An example of content negotiation (implemented in a way that would be
impractical on www.mozilla.org):
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/test/xhtml-suite/xhtml-index
(Check the source & last line on the page using different browsers--that
is using Mozilla and another browser.)
> 2. Is there a realistic date for the zope stuff.
AFAIK, no.
> 3. How many pages are we talking about?
I don't have numbers, yet, but I try to come up with some.
> <gripe>
> Really, I don't care about any of the above as long as the front page
> validates at validator.w3.org with the doctype specified inline. :-)
> </gripe>
I pinged Endico on the bug.
--
Henri Sivonen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.clinet.fi/~henris/
