Comments on: Doctype Woes (back to HTML4) http://lucumr.pocoo.org/cogitations/2007/10/03/doctype-woes-back-to-html4/ Armin Ronacher thinking Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:46:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2 By: Lucumr Cogitations » Blog Archive » Abusing XHTML http://lucumr.pocoo.org/cogitations/2007/10/03/doctype-woes-back-to-html4/#comment-498 Lucumr Cogitations » Blog Archive » Abusing XHTML Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:35:31 +0000 http://lucumr.pocoo.org/cogitations/2007/10/03/doctype-woes-back-to-html4/#comment-498 [...] small resumption to my previous post about XHTML/HTML here a small list of websites using XHTML that break when rendered on a browser in XHTML [...] […] small resumption to my previous post about XHTML/HTML here a small list of websites using XHTML that break when rendered on a browser in XHTML […]

]]> By: Armin Ronacher http://lucumr.pocoo.org/cogitations/2007/10/03/doctype-woes-back-to-html4/#comment-497 Armin Ronacher Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:17:43 +0000 http://lucumr.pocoo.org/cogitations/2007/10/03/doctype-woes-back-to-html4/#comment-497 @Karl: Of course that's true for HTML. But at least as far as I know HTML was designed with the fail silently approach in mind. Which by the way was a very good idea for the early web because I allowed browser vendors to extend it. And I don't have a problem with the fact that XHTML has to by syntactically correct, it's just that it doesn't make things that much easier. The number of pages that incorrectly use XHTML is insane. If now browsers would implement XHTML like the w3c specified it half of the web2.0 breaks. XHTML would probably have a brighter future if there wouldn't have been such a hype around it some years ago. People certainly misunderstood XHTML and started using it when browsers haven't supported it at all. And now browsers have the same problem like IE had ten years ago. They had to implement all the bugs of Netscape too so stay compatible. Well. Let's see what the future brings, but so far XHTML just makes things a lot harder for the average developer. @Karl: Of course that’s true for HTML. But at least as far as I know HTML was designed with the fail silently approach in mind. Which by the way was a very good idea for the early web because I allowed browser vendors to extend it. And I don’t have a problem with the fact that XHTML has to by syntactically correct, it’s just that it doesn’t make things that much easier. The number of pages that incorrectly use XHTML is insane. If now browsers would implement XHTML like the w3c specified it half of the web2.0 breaks.

XHTML would probably have a brighter future if there wouldn’t have been such a hype around it some years ago. People certainly misunderstood XHTML and started using it when browsers haven’t supported it at all. And now browsers have the same problem like IE had ten years ago. They had to implement all the bugs of Netscape too so stay compatible.

Well. Let’s see what the future brings, but so far XHTML just makes things a lot harder for the average developer.

]]> By: Alan Hynes http://lucumr.pocoo.org/cogitations/2007/10/03/doctype-woes-back-to-html4/#comment-493 Alan Hynes Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:40:35 +0000 http://lucumr.pocoo.org/cogitations/2007/10/03/doctype-woes-back-to-html4/#comment-493 I'm afraid it is true, XML is a (true) subset of SGML. SGML has an incredible amount of customisation available through the declaration of their DTDs, tag omissibility, short referencing, case-insensitivity, etc. etc. If you play around long enough, you can create SGML that is XML (through declarations and things, although there are always minor exceptions such as quoting of attribute values). There's a really good reason that XML came along, SGML was just too flexible and incredibly difficult to write tools around that catered entirely to the specification and the freedom the declaration allowed. There are tools capable of displaying SGML rather well, but they aren't common and they usually aren't free. I’m afraid it is true, XML is a (true) subset of SGML. SGML has an incredible amount of customisation available through the declaration of their DTDs, tag omissibility, short referencing, case-insensitivity, etc. etc. If you play around long enough, you can create SGML that is XML (through declarations and things, although there are always minor exceptions such as quoting of attribute values).
There’s a really good reason that XML came along, SGML was just too flexible and incredibly difficult to write tools around that catered entirely to the specification and the freedom the declaration allowed. There are tools capable of displaying SGML rather well, but they aren’t common and they usually aren’t free.

]]> By: karl dubost, w3c http://lucumr.pocoo.org/cogitations/2007/10/03/doctype-woes-back-to-html4/#comment-492 karl dubost, w3c Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:13:07 +0000 http://lucumr.pocoo.org/cogitations/2007/10/03/doctype-woes-back-to-html4/#comment-492 You said: "Fortunately browsers will never show you those errors because they parse XHTML with their tagsoup parser they use for HTML too." But that will be true for HTML too. What is your incentive to write conformant HTML 4.01? You said: “Fortunately browsers will never show you those errors because they parse XHTML with their tagsoup parser they use for HTML too.”

But that will be true for HTML too. What is your incentive to write conformant HTML 4.01?

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