Comments on: Will Mark turn to ASCII? http://tntluoma.com/web/will-mark-turn-to-ascii/ Stuff I've Written Down Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:52:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: TjL http://tntluoma.com/web/will-mark-turn-to-ascii/comment-page-1/#comment-844 TjL Wed, 15 Jan 2003 19:54:00 +0000 http://tntluoma.com/?p=251#comment-844 <p>Why do I want to use XHTML? Because it forces me to think more clearly and write better markup. It's easier to automatically parse if I want to.</p> <p>I actually wrote a little PHP snippet that sends XHTML as the "correct" MIME type IF the requesting IP is my home address. (I'll dig it out if anyone wants it.) This gives me the instant checking that I wanted with XHTML being parsed as XML without breaking it for others who can't use it.</p> <p>The standard says "should" not must. Should browsers be able to handle the proper MIME type? Yes. Can they? No. Should I use a MIME type that will work 100% of the time or a MIME type that may work some of the time?</p> <p>And what are my options? HTML 4? As Mark himself said, even HTML 4 can cause problems.</p> <p>No matter what you choose, there will be potential for problems. You have to either accept HTML 4 problems or XHTML problems. Mark has chose HTML 4, I'm sticking with XHTML.</p> Why do I want to use XHTML? Because it forces me to think more clearly and write better markup. It’s easier to automatically parse if I want to.

I actually wrote a little PHP snippet that sends XHTML as the “correct” MIME type IF the requesting IP is my home address. (I’ll dig it out if anyone wants it.) This gives me the instant checking that I wanted with XHTML being parsed as XML without breaking it for others who can’t use it.

The standard says “should” not must. Should browsers be able to handle the proper MIME type? Yes. Can they? No. Should I use a MIME type that will work 100% of the time or a MIME type that may work some of the time?

And what are my options? HTML 4? As Mark himself said, even HTML 4 can cause problems.

No matter what you choose, there will be potential for problems. You have to either accept HTML 4 problems or XHTML problems. Mark has chose HTML 4, I’m sticking with XHTML.

]]> By: Mark http://tntluoma.com/web/will-mark-turn-to-ascii/comment-page-1/#comment-843 Mark Wed, 15 Jan 2003 19:37:35 +0000 http://tntluoma.com/?p=251#comment-843 <p>As heretical as it sounds, Ian, Simon, and I are right. I can show you rants dating back to 1995 (HTML 2.0-era) where people on www-html were complaining that web authors were sending documents containing Netscape-specific extensions as "text/html". Due to systematic, long-term abuse, "text/html" has come to mean "here's something with angle brackets; go do that magic thing you do with angle brackets". XHTML was supposed to <em>solve</em> this problem, but the only way it can solve it is if you use the appropriate MIME type (Ian's point). But using the appropriate MIME type is never safe (my point). Therefore, XHTML is never appropriate. Interesting idea, didn't work out. Oh well.</p> As heretical as it sounds, Ian, Simon, and I are right. I can show you rants dating back to 1995 (HTML 2.0-era) where people on www-html were complaining that web authors were sending documents containing Netscape-specific extensions as “text/html”. Due to systematic, long-term abuse, “text/html” has come to mean “here’s something with angle brackets; go do that magic thing you do with angle brackets”. XHTML was supposed to solve this problem, but the only way it can solve it is if you use the appropriate MIME type (Ian’s point). But using the appropriate MIME type is never safe (my point). Therefore, XHTML is never appropriate. Interesting idea, didn’t work out. Oh well.

]]> By: Simon Willison http://tntluoma.com/web/will-mark-turn-to-ascii/comment-page-1/#comment-842 Simon Willison Wed, 15 Jan 2003 17:49:55 +0000 http://tntluoma.com/?p=251#comment-842 <p>Have you read Ian Hickson's XHTML served as text/html considered harmful document? IT makes the very valid argument that XHTML, when served as text/html, is not checked for XML well formedness by the browser which greatly increases the chances of invalid XHTML documents cropping up all over the web. An invalid XHTML document can't be read by an XML parser, which kind of kills off the whole point of using XHTML in the first place.</p> <p><a href="http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml" rel="nofollow"><a href="http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml</a></a></p> Have you read Ian Hickson’s XHTML served as text/html considered harmful document? IT makes the very valid argument that XHTML, when served as text/html, is not checked for XML well formedness by the browser which greatly increases the chances of invalid XHTML documents cropping up all over the web. An invalid XHTML document can’t be read by an XML parser, which kind of kills off the whole point of using XHTML in the first place.

http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml

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