Andrew Fedoniouk wrote: >> Any technology to be widely accepted shall establish good set >> of motivations. Ideally new technology shall bring benefits to all >> actors or parties involved. Groups involved in acceptance of, >> say, new version of HTML on the Web are: >> 1) web designers, >> 2) UA developers, >> 3) web administrators, >> 3) end users (indirectly), >> 4) CSP, web application developers, >> 5) groups of influence: web purists, web journalists, web theorists. >> 6) (did I miss someone here?) >> >> If, say, HTML5 will have some "really cool feature" that will make >> groups 1 and 2 happy then it does not matter will HTML5 be >> compatible with XHTML or not. XHTML has some benefits for >> groups 4, 5 and 6 so ...
It does matter. It is not just one of the important things, it is THE important thing. Having two divergent HTMLs will create problems for a vast number of people and will significantly reduce efficiencies for anyone that has to deal with it. Worse, it could cause the non-technical public to decide that HTML its just too much trouble, and THAT would be a tragedy. The irony is I'm not proposing much; just have as a design axiom that the trajectory of HTML5 and XHTML should aimed toward convergence when technically possible. -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/
