You don't need XML/XHTML for structured markup and document-oriented web pages. SGML, on which HTML is based (or was based on originally), and which still can f

You don't need XML/XHTML for structured markup and document-oriented web pages. SGML, on which HTML is based (or was based on originally), and which still can formalize HTML in all its glory [1] (my project), is much more capable and user-oriented than XML anyway. XML was devised as an "easy" subset of SGML to eventually form the basis of HTML, SVG, and other web vocabularies; it just didn't make it into the mainstream web. But that's no reason to give up on formal methods for content engineering alltogether. I can assure you SGML works just fine for the modern web. Now if you mean that web standardization as a community-driven process has come to an end years ago, and has been taken over by Google et. al. in the form of WHATWG, with folks cheering at taking HTML out of the hands of W3C, I agree this is an unsustainable situation given the importance of HTML (though, personally, I also like HTML5 and what WHATWG has been doing). [1]: http://sgmljs.net/blog/blog1701.html http://sgmljs.net/blog/blog1701.html