[whatwg] HTML 5 vs. XHTML 2.0

[Henri Sivonen]

On Nov 13, 2004, at 01:52, Laurens Holst wrote:

> At my job we currently create the documentation files for our product 
> with a transformation of our documents, which use a 'custom' format, 
> which is basically XHTML 2.0 plus some XHTML 1.0 tags which we felt 
> were practical (e.g. <img>), and some stuff of our own.

I don't think such private use is a good argument for including 
elements in a general-purpose markup language for the Web. By the way, 
why don't you use Docbook?

> I can say that stuff like 'section' and 'h' instead of h1...h6 is 
> quite vital to the process of document creation. Also, try for example 
> to generate a TOC out of h1...h6 headings (with XSLT, that is...), 
> it's pretty hard.

With XSLT, it is not uncommon that the problem is the hammer--not the 
nail.

Anyway, I do think it's a problem for styling, automatic content 
extraction and non-CSS presentation that HTML lacks the markup for 
indicating which parts of the page are content proper and which are 
navigation and other chrome. Therefore, a footer element for isolating 
navigation and legal stuff from content would make sense.
(Already suggested in 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2002Aug/0229.html at the 
end of the message.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://iki.fi/hsivonen/