[whatwg] Re: XHTML rendering and media types

[Anne van Kesteren]

>> 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.
> 
> I'm not sure how IE handles this, but a compliant browser should
> render XHTML in one of two ways:

IE will handle it as tag soup. Or, when hacked around[2] it will use an 
XML parser.


> When the XHTML is labeled as text/html a traditional SGML parser
> should be used, and the document should be compliant with Appendix C
> of the XHTML spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#guidelines

Appendix C is crap[3]. When XHTML is labeled as text/html it is treated as
most HTML on todays web is. Tag soup.


> When the XHTML is labeled as application/xhtml+xml as defined by RFC
> 3236 ( http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3236.txt ) an XML renderer should
> be used. In this case I would assume that rendering before the entire
> document is recieved is backwards, as an invalid document should not
> render at all.

Valid or invalid has nothing to do with it. Being well-formed is key. RFC


> More details on XHTML media types can be found here: 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-xhtml-media-types-20020801/

That is note, please don't quote or refer to it otherwise than that[1].


[1]<http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/08/xhtml-media-types>
[2]<http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/07/ie-xhtml>
    <http://dean.edwards.name/my/application_xml.html>
[3]<http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml>


-- 
  Anne van Kesteren
  <http://annevankesteren.nl/>