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

[Lennart Jablonka]

Quoth Thorsten Glaser:
> 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,

yes

> 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.

No.  If the browser is unable to handle it, so be it—no XHTML 
support, that’s just a feature not implemented that people might 
want—but the server is /not/ non-conforming.

Handling XHTML approximately by treating it as HTML-syntax HTML 
may be useful in stead of refusing to handle XHTML, but that is 
not implementing XHTML.

> ←←←             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.

I.e., <asdf></asdf> and <asdf/> are equivalent.  There is 
a recommendation on what not to do.

> 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:

Which, of course, is not the only standard standardizing XML 
documents using the XHTML Media type and namespace; something 
conforming to WHATWG HTML is very much valid.  That drops the 
compatibility guidelines.  And indeed, the subject contains 
“xhtml5.”

> 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

I.e., you need to follow the guidelines if you are XHTML and 
labeled text/html.

> This normatively underlines what I wrote above.

It underlines one of your statements.

> Happy?

Yes: I understand your position and disagree.

> Now excuse me, I’m kinda busy with $dayjob

Have a nice day.

> and in no way obligated to
> do your research for you.

It is not research that I could have done myself that I asked for, 
but your interpretation of the standards.  Thank you for doing 
that despite not being obligated to do so.