Advice on Reference Book

Sherm Pendley wrote:

"Jonathan N. Little" <lws4art (AT) centralva (DOT) net> writes:

Sherm Pendley wrote:
"Jonathan N. Little" <lws4art (AT) centralva (DOT) net> writes:

John Dunlop wrote:
No one has suggested serving XHTML to particular browsers or as text/html.
I meant that one could serve XHTML as application/xhtml+xml to any browser
that indicates a preference for that MIME type.
But are you not? IE will not accept application/xhtml+xml, so you
either have to serve it for *that* browser as text/html or present IE
users with a download dialog!
You've overlooked a third option: Serve HTML as text/html to browsers
that don't grok application/xhtml+xml.
But then you could not use the XML features of XHTML... no SVG, no
MathML, ...

So? The point remains that digressing into what happens when IE is given
XHTML with a text/html content-type is a red herring - it's precisely that
situation that we *avoid* by using proper content negotiation.

I'm not claiming that such negotiation is useful, or easy - just pointing
out that you're having a different conversation than the rest of us. :-)

So what is the point in using XHTML over HTML if you don't use the
features explicit to XHTML? Just use HTML and be done with it is the point.


--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan N. Little:

John Dunlop wrote:

Eric has now posted some Accept headers that say that Internet
Explorer, at least sometimes, accepts everything, including
application/xhtml+xml and treats everything with equal preference.

You think huh?

Yes, and if what Eric posted are in fact Accept headers sent by Internet
Explorer, I would even go further and say that we know. Internet Explorer
not only accepts application/xhtml+xml but it also gives it the highest
possible preference (by default and along with every other type).

http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/xhtml1.0
XHTML 1.0 Strict properly served

I don't know what "properly served" means.

[re "offer to download the file":]

It is what IE offers to do when you tries to display an *XHTML* document
properly served as application/xhtml+xml

If Internet Explorer doesn't explicitly specify application/xhtml+xml in
its Accept header, it wouldn't get an XHTML document.

--
John

Jonathan N. Little:

So what is the point in using XHTML over HTML if you don't use the
features explicit to XHTML?

Serving XHTML as well as HTML doesn't prevent you from exploiting XHTML.

--
John

"Jonathan N. Little" <lws4art (AT) centralva (DOT) net> writes:

Sherm Pendley wrote:

I'm not claiming that such negotiation is useful, or easy - just pointing
out that you're having a different conversation than the rest of us. :-)

So what is the point in using XHTML over HTML if you don't use the
features explicit to XHTML? Just use HTML and be done with it is the
point.

Please respond to what I actually wrote, OK? I'm talking about HOW one
could use XHTML, not WHY. Mechanism, not policy. Like I said, you're
having (or trying to have) a different conversation than the rest of us.

sherm--

On Thu, 22 Oct 2009, John Dunlop wrote:

Internet Explorer not only accepts application/xhtml+xml
but it also gives it the highest possible preference
(by default and along with every other type).

Note that
Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml
and
Accept: application/xhtml+xml, text/html
mean exactly the same.

In order to express a preference, you must write e.g.
Accept: application/xhtml+xml;q=1.0, text/html;q=0.9

--
Solipsists of the world — unite!

On Thu, 22 Oct 2009, Eric wrote:

It is not my job to fix up Microsoft's errors when serving web pages.

It is also not my job to rewrite Apache defaults when their defaults
are correct.

I have no problem with Apache's default settings and Internet Explorer
at http://www.user.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/ruby-annotation.var

--
¹ superscript 1 ¼ fraction 1/4 Ð D stroke ð d stroke
² superscript 2 ½ fraction 1/2 Þ Thorn þ thorn
³ superscript 3 ¾ fraction 3/4 Ý Y acute ý y acute
× multiply sign ¦ broken bar

Sherm Pendley (spamtrap (AT) shermpendley (DOT) com) wrote:
: Josiah Jenkins <josiah-jenkins (AT) somewhere_else (DOT) invalid> writes:

: > I've been using :
: > Instant HTML Programmers Reference
: > HTML 4.0 Edition.

: I would have avoided that book based on the title alone. Markup is not
: programming, and I wouldn't trust an author who doesn't understand the
: difference.

If the title was "HTML Programm_ING_ Reference" then I might agree.
However the title shown could just as easily be intended to mean [a
reference book for programmers about html]. There are many such books,
and they typically include reference and examples on things that are not
html itself but are important or useful details for programmers to know
when building applications that use html, such as the use of modules such
as perl's CGI.pm to create markup, and details on the CGI specs when
receiving data from a browser as it responds to a user's interactions with
a form. None of that is html, but it is all stuff that a programmer needs
to know if (and pretty much _only_ if) they are working with html.

XHTML, mentioned in other posts...

As for XML and XHTML, my rant is as follows. HTML can almost be written
so as to be valid XML (meaning that xml tools could be used to manipulate
html documents).

XHTML should be scrapped. Instead the HTML specs should be changed in a
minimal number of ways to allow a person to create valid HTML that is also
valid XML. For example HTML should allow end tags for INPUT, BR and HR.
When interpretted as HTML these would simply be ignored. If correctly
placed then the document would also be valid XML. (At least some browsers
appear to already allow this). Same with the empty end tag syntax, HTML
should allow this (does it already? I don't think so), (and again, at
least some browsers appear to already allow this). These and some other
minor changes in what is _allowed_ in html would not force html to be
valid xml, but it would allow it to be valid xml, which is often all that
really matters. You would pass the html document through an html checker
to confirm it is valid html, and through an xml checker to ensure it is
valid xml. There would be some xml things that could not be used in html,
so tools such as xslt implementations would still have html output
options, but in that case the html they produce would be valid xml as
well.

$0.10