Apparently the MIME/DOCTYPE argument of XHTML vs HTML has been going on
for a while, a bit out of my scope. I only have one argument to
contribute, which I don't believe I've seen before and may be of some
value.
On Jun 7, 2005, at 7:17 AM, Rimantas Liubertas wrote:
Yes. Only critical thing for the Web standards is _understanding_ them
(and HTML4 _is_ a standard, you know?), not just using something that
is cool and much talked about.
And understanding includes knowing pros and cons and when and _why_ to
use each.
I (my company, my team, my clients) am interested in standards only so
far as they make the future more predictable. To make the future more
predictable, my code today needs to be more regimented.
HTML is a standard; it is broadly supported today, but its future is a
predictable dead end. Any future versions of a document coded in HTML
will need to be coded from scratch, or a custom parser will need to be
made to convert it to some future standard (or close enough that
hand-tweaking the rest is ok). Because HTML is more loosely defined, it
is more difficult for teams to code to a regimented standard, making
the prospects of even a custom parser unlikely in the future. Things
don't *have* to become sloppy just because the team codes in HTML, but
it will be difficult to tell if they are becoming sloppy -- so the
future is not as predictable.
XHTML is a standard; it is poorly supported today, but its future will
allow it to be predictably converted to any other XML standard through
standardized tools (offline, regardless of MIME type or DOCTYPE). It is
a highly regimented standard, with tools already built to help coding
teams make their code more predictable.
XHTML is useful to me because I can swap out the DOCTYPE and serve it
as HTML, because it *is* HTML, giving it broad support today while
giving it a predictable and flexible future. This is, essentially,
XHTML-compatible HTML 4.01 Strict.
One of the central tenets of the arguments that we should be coding to
HTML instead of XHTML is that the only or primary purpose of using
XHTML is that you need XML-based abilities (namespaces, etc.). This is
something I agree with. However, it is a mistake to believe that these
abilities will be used today, when the document is created, or even
tomorrow when it is served from your web server. It might be 5 years
from now when the document is inserted as-is into an XML database
archive, or 7 years from now when converted to XHTML2, or later this
year when you get around to syndicating that content you've been
marking up for the past 5 years.
We are coding and serving HTML today; by coding it as XHTML-compatible
we can extend the life of the document indefinitely.
And that's all I have to say about that.
--
Ben Curtis : webwright
bivia : a personal web studio
http://www.bivia.com
v: (818) 507-6613
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