[whatwg] Seperation of Content and Interface

[Matthew Raymond]

Jim Ley wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 16:34:28 +0000 (UTC), Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>>So why hasn't XHTML replaced HTML?
> 
> Because as I said below, it offers no benefits, and huge
> disadvantages, the mozilla implementation is laughable (no incremental
> rendering of HTML!).

    Is incremental rendering really possible for XHTML? For give my 
ignorance, but I was under the impression that according to 
specification an XHTML document has to validate entirely before being 
displayed. If that's the case, a compliant application can't start 
loading the document until the entire file is transferred. Isn't Mozilla 
simply sticking to the letter of the spec?

>>And note that SVG and XForms are in exactly the same problem space as Web
>>Apps 1.0, according to the members of those working groups that I've
>>spoken to.
> 
> Well, I don't know, we've not seen the use cases of Web Apps 1.0, so I
> can't really say, it may indeed be true that the combination of the
> two are similar to web-apps, but that's different to them being the
> same.  As I say though, I don't know enough about web-apps to say.

    There has a "Requirements and ideas" section that outlines the 
problem space of Web Apps 1.0 for months, and development of the draft 
is currently in full swing. I fail to see how members of the SVG and 
XForms work groups couldn't at least get an idea of what WA1 does.

>>The difference of course is that WF2 is implementable in IE, whereas
>>XHTML fundamentally isn't.
> 
> Of course XHTML is, IE6 is the best XHTML browser IMO, it renders it
> far better than the others, it's incremental, it's fast, the only
> problem is you have to jump through hoops to make it even do it
> (although I've got a feeling it's not even possible in the current
> releases.)

    As I explained before, it is my understanding that a compliant XHTML 
renderer will not display a page with invalid markup. IE6 is so "good" 
at rendering XHTML because it does not parse or render it as XHTML at 
all. Effectively, you're saying that Mozilla would be so much better if 
it rendered XHTML as tag soup.