Posted by Michael Winter on 10/27/06 12:56

Harlan Messinger wrote:
> Andy Dingley wrote:

[snip]

>> ... Appendix C isn't permissible for 1.1 ...
>
> Could you explain that more fully?

Appendix C (XHTML 1.0) doesn't apply to XHTML 1.1, in part, because the
difference between it and HTML 4.01 includes changes to the DTD that
would require a user agent to actually recognise XHTML 1.1 and not
simply treat it as HTML.

- New elements have been added (ruby, rbc, rtc, rb, rt, rp)
- The name attribute for anchors is no longer defined (user
agents are forced to recognise id attribute values as
destination anchors).
- The usemap attribute no longer refers to a name attribute
value, but is instead an IDREF.
- The lang attribute is not defined (user agents are forced to
recognise xml:lang).

I will admit that these alterations are insignificant for the bulk of
HTML documents, but it would still be wrong to say that Appendix C
applied to any XHTML 1.x document. Moreover, these are only the
differences mentioned in the Recommendation, and as Jukka wrote, there
could be more significant ones that aren't listed.

In addition, and in the language of RFC 2119, XHTML 1.1 SHOULD be served
such that it will be processed as an application of XML, with
application/xhtml+xml being the preferred media type. Appendix C
facilitates parsing as HTML, so it cannot be relevant. I don't see how
there could be a reason significant enough to override that
recommendation, especially as XHTML 1.0 is so (apparently) similar
should one feel compelled to serve XHTML and nothing's wrong with HTML
4.01 in the first place.

[snip]

Mike

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