Re: Coding by example?

David Dorward <dorward (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

There may be pragmatic reasons to avoid it

My comment was more "Forbidden by spec" then "Not a good idea".

Then kindly provide a normative reference to this.

As I said - It's debatable.

Section 5.1 of the XHTML 1.0 spec says:
XHTML Documents which follow the guidelines set forth in Appendix C, "HTML
Compatibility Guidelines" may be labeled with the Internet Media
Type "text/html" [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 [RFC3236]. For further
information on using media types with XHTML, see the informative note
[XHTMLMIME].

It doesn't say that documents which don't conform to Appendix C may be
served as text/html.

But then we get to Appendix C itself, which is marked as informative. So a
normative section requires conformace to an information section!

Then we have RFC 2854 which says:
In addition, XHTML1 defines a profile of use of XHTML which is compatible
with HTML 4.01 and which may also be labeled as text/html.

While not making it clear if the "profile" it means is the subset of XHTML
1.0 that conforms to Appendix C.

And the XHTML media types note (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/)
clarifies this as:
The use of 'text/html' for XHTML SHOULD be limited for the purpose of
rendering on existing HTML user agents, and SHOULD be limited to [XHTML1]
documents which follow the HTML Compatibility Guidelines.

But it says "SHOULD" and not "MUST"!

Going back to the XHTML 1.0 spec and section C.1. it says:
"you may want to avoid"

Not "SHOULD" or "MAY" or any other RFC 2119ism.

Nothing what you wrote, quoted & linked supports your claim that
including an XML declaration is a "Must not", which is the only way your
"Forbidden by spec" phrase can reasonably be interpreted.

It isn't debatable, it's simply wrong.

--
Spartanicus

Spartanicus wrote:

Nothing what you wrote, quoted & linked supports your claim that
including an XML declaration is a "Must not", which is the only way your
"Forbidden by spec" phrase can reasonably be interpreted.

The more I read it, the more I'm beginning to think that the spec basically
says "To serve as text/html, you must follow the guidelines in Appendix C",
but Appendix C doesn't give any normative guidelines, so there aren't any
requirements.

.... and that XHTML as text/html is even dumber then I thought.

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

David Dorward wrote:

The more I read it, the more I'm beginning to think that the spec
basically says

The other way I can see of interpreting it is that there is no provision to
serve XHTML as text/html *unless* you take the advice in Appendix C - even
though it is fuzzily worded and only informative!

Certainly I think that this bit of the spec is very badly written.


--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is