Re: [xml-dev] XHTML 2 Working Group won't be renewed?

[rjelliffe@allette.com.au]

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> Dan Brickley writes:
>
>> Although not as high-profile as a REC-track group, there is nothing to
>> stop a group of like-minded W3C members single-handedly chartering an
>> Incubator Group (XG, see http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/ ) to try to
>> progress the XHTML efforts. Perhaps - in part - by defining a recovery
>> model for ill-formed XML markup?
>
> The market will decide, but my take on what the XHTML users out there
> like about XHTML _includes_ the strict error checking discipline it
> imposes. . .

But does WF actually catch the kinds of errors people make? Or does it
create the idea and requirement that some things are errors, and allow
people think they have achieved something by conforming to it, that they
have worked hard, whereas in fact they are little further advanced than
they would have been otherwise? Does XHTML merely pander to neat-freaks?

XHTML will always be necessary, because XSLTs that generate HTML need an
HTML formulated as XML. I don't think that the number of documents
delivered over the web using XHTML is a relevant metric.

I would prefer if HTML was reformulated as a three layer technology:

   Wiki -> HTML -> XHTML

reconstructing more of what SGML did but cleanly. Something like this
seems much more doable under the aegis of a single WG.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe