[whatwg] Allow trailing slash in always-empty HTML5 elements?

[Mike Schinkel]

The following are honest questions, not rhetorical baiting.

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> Use XHTML, send it with an HTML MIME type, and be happy.
> No!

	Why not?  What's wrong with doing that?  

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> In many more cases, an HTML document or even an 
>> XHTML 1.0 as text/html document is just tag soup.

	What's wrong with that?

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> > There were a few proprietary, incompatible, buggy engines 
> > locked up in various browsers; and that was about it.
> OpenSP, which is free software,

	Will a recommendation to use OpenSP be included in the spec?

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> Because the fact is that when authors try to use XHTML as 
>> text/html, they inevitibly fail to do so properly.  It takes 
>> considerable knowledge and skill to be aware of and handle 
>> all issues ranging from parsing, character encodings to scripts 
>> and stylesheets.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> There is significant evidence to show that millions of authors 
>> make those mistakes very frequently, despite thinking they're 
>> using XHTML.
>> That is why I strongly believe that XHTML 1.0 Appendix C was 
>> a huge mistake and that continuing to allow authors to think 
>> they can use XHTML as text/html is extremely harmful for the 
>> future of XML, not beneficial to it.

Again, why is this a problem?  It is no different than we have today.

Maybe I should ask a different question. If people write XHTML badly, what
makes you think they will write HTML5 any better?

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> I really don't understand how you can go on about the benefits 
>> of XML because it requires well-formedness, but then turn around 
>> and say XML can be served as text/html which just makes all your 
>> arguments null and void.

As I understand it, serving with the correct mime type for XHTML isn't an
option, assuming you want people to be able to read it with current
browsers, or am I wrong on that?

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> >> The problem is when we don't realize we have a problem in the 
>> >> first place. 
>> The problem is that you're using the wrong MIME type.

And what MIME type should he be using that will work on today's Internet?

I must be missing something...

-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/