Re: [Lynx-dev] lynx misrenders many *IN*valid xhtml5 pages on my site

[Thorsten Glaser]

Lennart Jablonka dixit:

>> Yes, but then it MUST send HTML-compatible things or it’s not
>> an XHTML page. As simple as that. (I also serve my XHTML as
>> text/html always and just write it in compatible mode.)
>
> I don’t buy this.  What is and isn’t XHTML isn’t dependent on what the
> client declares it can handle.

Oh, but XHTML ≠ XHTML.

There’s HTML-compatible XHTML, which you can serve as text/html,
and there’s nōn-HTML-compatible XHTML, which you must serve as
application/xhtml+xml, and if you expect to serve websites you
may serve the latter only if explicitly requested by the browser
because the browser needs to be able to handle this, and e.g.
NCSA Mosaic won’t know how to do that.

> Please help me understand why you think that,
> with a citation perhaps.

It’s split over the XHTML and HTTP standard and the DTDs.

Even pure XML documents that…


←←←             Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition) (p34 of 94)

Tags for Empty Elements

   [44]    EmptyElemTag    ::=    '<' [392]Name ([393]S [394]Attribute)*
   [395]S? '/>' [396][WFC: Unique Att Spec]

   Empty-element tags may be used for any element which has no content,
   whether or not it is declared using the keyword EMPTY. [397]For
   interoperability, the empty-element tag SHOULD be used, and SHOULD only
   be used, for elements which are declared EMPTY.


In the end effect, though, who cares about standards, what you need to
care about is browser compatibility. That being said the standards do
explicitly make room for browser compatibility as outlined in the above
snippet and referenced standards.

OK, here’s a snippet from the XHTML standard for this:


XHTML 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Editi... (p22 of 39)
                            5. Compatibility Issues

   This section is normative.

   Although  there  is  no  requirement  for  XHTML  1.0  documents  to be
   compatible  with  existing  user  agents,  in  practice this is easy to
   accomplish.  Guidelines  for creating compatible documents can be found
   in [132]Appendix C.

5.1. Internet Media Type

   XHTML  Documents which follow the guidelines set forth in [133]Appendix
   C,  "HTML  Compatibility  Guidelines"  may be labeled with the Internet
   Media Type "text/html" [[134]RFC2854], as they are compatible with most
   HTML  browsers.  Those  documents, and any other document conforming to
   this  specification,  may  also be labeled with the Internet Media Type
   "application/xhtml+xml"  as  defined  in  [[135]RFC3236].  For  further


This normatively underlines what I wrote above. Happy?

Now excuse me, I’m kinda busy with $dayjob and in no way obligated to
do your research for you.

bye,
//mirabilos
-- 
<igli> exceptions: a truly awful implementation of quite a nice idea.
<igli> just about the worst way you could do something like that, afaic.
<igli> it's like anti-design.  <mirabilos> that too… may I quote you on that?
<igli> sure, tho i doubt anyone will listen ;)