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Re: Web headers
- From: Joe Buck <jbuck at synopsys dot COM>
- To: zack at codesourcery dot com (Zack Weinberg)
- Cc: jsm28 at cam dot ac dot uk (Joseph S. Myers),rra at stanford dot edu (Russ Allbery),fwyzard at inwind dot it (Andrea 'Fyre Wyzard' Bocci), gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 15:49:23 -0800 (PST)
- Subject: Re: Web headers
Zack writes:
> No one's done validation on all the existing web pages to make sure
> they are correct XHTML.
Gerald has done some validation, but to really have correct XHTML the
DOCTYPE should be present.
> Browsers seem to be happy with XHTML <tag />
> notation in a document marked as plain HTML, but they may not accept
> the other way around.
The space between the tag and the / is what makes the backward
compatibility work: the older browsers just ignore the / as an
unknown pseudo-attribute. XML would allow the writing of <tag/>.
As best I can tell, browsers have always completely ignored headers
they don't understand, and this was a widely understood design principle
of the web going back to pre-Mosaic days.
> Also, I believe there were concerns about browsers giving up
> completely when faced with a DOCTYPE they didn't understand, or the
> required <?xml ...?> header.
I would be amazed if such a browser existed. Browsers have never
worked that way; they keep lumbering on, trying to do something
sensible in the presence of the most bletcherous error-filled "HTML";
they do so by ignoring what they don't understand, but still processing
any data between <mystery-directive> and </mystery-directive>.
> [myself, I'd be quite happy to see us go whole hog for strict XHTML
> and style sheeting.]
This, on the other hand, is more likely to cause problems: if all of the
style is in the style sheet, that's more likely to cause problems for
Netscape 4.x. I would recommend only going for "XHMTL 1.0 Transitional".
> zw
>