3 ms·

XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009

19 points by daleharvey 17y ago

daleharvey 17y ago
completely ignoring the side issues, I think its a shame that we will apparently never be able to use the thousands of xml tools on html sites. goes off to write a html parser for my favourite language(its not ruby or python)
- jmillikin 17y ago
  XHTML 2 is being dropped in favor of XHTML 5, which is being developed in sync with HTML 5. XHTML itself will remain as (un-)popular as always.
  - crs 17y ago
    You know I just don't understand why some people are so against XHTML.
    - jmillikin 17y ago
      Anybody can vomit text into a file, rename it ".html", and have it rendered to something by a web browser. When they try the same thing with XHTML, they receive an error page. Even otherwise reasonable programmers, who would not expect invalid code to be parsed by a compiler, blithely contribute to the spread of invalid HTML. For example, the front page of news.yc fails with 143 errors: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0 http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombina... A second factor is that IE does not support XHTML. Any features that rely on XHTML support (inline SVG, MathML, custom attributes, &c) are unavailable in a "portable" application. IE 6 is still a very large chunk of the market, especially among non-technical users, so relying on any features it doesn't support is iffy from a business perspective.
    - feverishaaron 17y ago
      Perhaps because many have come to realize that it is a pipe dream that browsers would fully support it.
    - simonw 17y ago
      Because it imposes arbitrary additional rules that make errors fatal, in a Web where errors haven't been fatal in the past.
    - jamesbritt 17y ago
      This may shed some light: http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml Truth is, most people, including some vocal advocates of XHTML, don't serve it with the proper content-type.
- rimantas 17y ago
  html5 has xml serialization if you need that.
- inimino 17y ago
  The nice thing is, now that HTML5 is being specified, parsers can more easily written that will be able to correctly parse the billions of existing Web pages, which aren't in XML anyway.
- simonw 17y ago
  Or you could run HTML through Tidy to get XHTML, then run your XML tools against that. Personally, I just use lxml and BeautifulSoup.
  - jcapote 17y ago
    Ha, I do exactly this for converting these generated html files into pdfs using itext/flyingsaucer

19 points by daleharvey 17y ago

completely ignoring the side issues, I think its a shame that we will apparently never be able to use the thousands of xml tools on html sites. goes off to write a html parser for my favourite language(its not ruby or python)

jmillikin 17y ago
XHTML 2 is being dropped in favor of XHTML 5, which is being developed in sync with HTML 5. XHTML itself will remain as (un-)popular as always.
- crs 17y ago
  You know I just don't understand why some people are so against XHTML.
  - jmillikin 17y ago
    Anybody can vomit text into a file, rename it ".html", and have it rendered to something by a web browser. When they try the same thing with XHTML, they receive an error page. Even otherwise reasonable programmers, who would not expect invalid code to be parsed by a compiler, blithely contribute to the spread of invalid HTML. For example, the front page of news.yc fails with 143 errors: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0 http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombina... A second factor is that IE does not support XHTML. Any features that rely on XHTML support (inline SVG, MathML, custom attributes, &c) are unavailable in a "portable" application. IE 6 is still a very large chunk of the market, especially among non-technical users, so relying on any features it doesn't support is iffy from a business perspective.
  - feverishaaron 17y ago
    Perhaps because many have come to realize that it is a pipe dream that browsers would fully support it.
  - simonw 17y ago
    Because it imposes arbitrary additional rules that make errors fatal, in a Web where errors haven't been fatal in the past.
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    This may shed some light: http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml Truth is, most people, including some vocal advocates of XHTML, don't serve it with the proper content-type.
rimantas 17y ago
html5 has xml serialization if you need that.
inimino 17y ago
The nice thing is, now that HTML5 is being specified, parsers can more easily written that will be able to correctly parse the billions of existing Web pages, which aren't in XML anyway.
simonw 17y ago
Or you could run HTML through Tidy to get XHTML, then run your XML tools against that. Personally, I just use lxml and BeautifulSoup.
- jcapote 17y ago
  Ha, I do exactly this for converting these generated html files into pdfs using itext/flyingsaucer