More markup
Jan 14, 2003
I don't fully understand Mark Pilgrim's somewhat weird reaction to the (mistakenly) removed <cite> tag in the XHTML2 draft.
I can understand that he'd get upset, and maybe that he'd lose faith in w3. But reverting to HTML 4.01? I mean, uh, why not stick with XHTML 1.0 or 1.1? How does an XHTML2 draft necessitate a conversion back to a five year old markup-language? Why not go back to a table-based design and scatter <font> tags all over while he's at it? I suspect he hasn't lost his mind, that it's just a public display of contempt for the way the w3 is handling this issue and I'll bet he'll come back to XHTML (1.0/1.1) pretty soon.
Regarding XHTML2 though; while it adds numerous advantages and is very pure, it's too pure. So pure only purists will bother working with it, it's just not simple enough to get widespread acceptance. Which I guess needn't be a bad thing entirely; XHTML 1.0/1.1 isn't going anywhere, the less obsessive perfectionists could simply stick with that. Or revert back to HTML 4.01, I guess.
Update: Sir Mark Pilgrim dropped a comment here and updated his site with answers. It goes something like this: XHTML 1.1 is the queen bitch of markup-languages, in his words it's a "pain in the ass with no demonstrable benefit". Sure, I buy that.
Why not XHTML 1.0? It was never intended to be more than a stepping stone to XHTML 1.1 and future versions. Served as text/html, it's just plain evil, and served as application/xhtml+xml, it's as dangerous as 1.1 and the proposed 2.0. Now that I've had a taste of what it's allegedly a stepping stone towards, I just can't see the point. Mark Pilgrim
That I have a bit more of a problem buying. A lot of people are using XHTML 1.0 and getting by just fine, myself included. My markup isn't bulletproof but it beats reverting to HTML 4.01 any day of the week. Thanks for clarifying though, Mark, hopefully someone or something will get XHTML2 on track by the time it's final.
Comments
I've updated today's post to respond to these comments.
Comment by Mark at 22:01, 14 Jan, 2003 #
I agree Tomas. It is easy to see how one can be easily frustrated by the W3C, but reverting to HTML 4? No thank you. XHTML 1.0 is no holy grail, but that's not to say it is without merit.
If a business model were applicable, one might hope that xhtml2 would fail to impress, not catch on, be scrapped, and send people back to the drawing board.
Comment by Ryan at 12:13, 15 Jan, 2003 #
How do you know which number of HTML-code you're using?
Comment by talisyn at 17:38, 15 Jan, 2003 #
Talisyn: Well, unless you're making a conscious effort to do otherwise, you're pretty much writing HTML 4.01. Unconscious choices rarely leads to valid code though. So, I guess if you don't really know what version you're using you're probably using Tag Soup -- i.e. equal parts browser-specific rendering bugs, pseudo-HTML and hope.
Concerning conscious choices, the DOCTYPE at the very top of the page dictates what version of HTML the document is written in, wether it validates as that language is another issue.
Comment by Tomas at 18:11, 15 Jan, 2003 #
All the bitching I've seen about XHTML seems to boil down to people thinking that XHTML is a child of HTML, rather than an XML application. Everyone who says that XHTML breaks depending on what MIME type is used seems to be citing things like missing end tags, as if they are forgetting that XHTML, as XML, must first-and-foremost be well-formed. And it wouldn't hurt if they actually validated their pages.
Comment by John at 20:48, 20 Jan, 2003 #
The discussion has been closed on this entry. Thanks to everybody who participated.