Re: When to use XML or HTML extensions?

[Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>]

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Hewko, Doug wrote:
> I noticed that some people use files with an XML extension and some with
> HTML. For example here are two equivalent pages of Jeni's XSLT Tutorial
> pages: 
> http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/index.xml
> http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/index.html

That's often because some people don't have browsers that can
read XML yet, so they can use the HTML.

> Other tutorials ("XML Bible", "Teach Yourself XML in 24 Hours", W3Schoosl,
> etc) tend to incorporate XML within a HTML document.

Then they are being very misleading. That is a technique called
Islands and (AFAIK) only works in MSIE5.* so it's completely
non-portable. 

> Is there some
> rule that tells you when to use one method vs another?

Your market. If they all use an identically-capable browser,
then use the best features available to them; otherwise provide
XML files for those who can read them and HTML for those who
cannot. 

///Peter