Subject: XHTML
From: sam th (sam@bur-jud-118-039.rh.uchicago.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 26 2000 - 16:18:40 CST
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Today, the WWWC published guidelines for XHTML, the successor to
HTML. The basic idea is that HTML will now be a valid XML document type.
I think that Abiword should make an effort to have out HTML exporter
output valid XHTML. This would require a number of changes:
1 Single tags are no longer allowed (<br>, <img="..">, etc). They
need to be replaced with either and end tag (<br></br>, which is now
valid) or and empty tag (<br /> <img="..." /> - note the space). The
second option is preferred for compatibility with older browsers.
Those who were following the earlier discussion of <br> should not that
while <br/> does not work in current browsers, <br /> does, even on lynx.
additionally, lynx does not render </p> as a double line break, and
therefore renders current abiword-generated HTML properly (that is, how
it looks in abiword, not how it looks in the HTML source), unlike, say
Navigator 4.07. I have included an XHTML document that demonstrates this.
2 There needs to be space between the open and close tags if the tag
has a non-empty content type. Basically, this means that <p></p> needs to
be replaced with <p> </p> - again, note the space.
3 We would have to include a <!DOCTYPE=...> tag at the beginning,
preferablly after the <?xml version="1.0"?> tag.
4 The <html> tag at the beginning has to refer to a namespace (the
only legal value is http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml). It would then look
like so: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhmtl">
5 The <DIV> tag would have to become <div>.
Additionally, the document would have to conform to whatever DTD we
specified in out <!DOCTYPE> tag. There are three of these, and after I
read them, I will let everyone know which one would be more appropriate.
Of course, if people think that we shouldn't support XHMTL, then I will
keep the rest of my suggestions to myself.
sam th
sytobinh@uchicago.edu
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