[whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

[Sam Ruby]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> As far as I can tell, the various problems that have been raised have now 
> been addressed. It is now possible to make an HTML5 document that is 
> parseable as XHTML5, such that you can't tell which it is without looking 
> at the MIME type (which of course you could ignore in your own toolchain). 
> HTML5 has an extension mechanism (used to great effect by the 
> microformats.org people, for example).
> 
> The other issue, supporting other vocabularies in HTML5, is an open issue, 
> but it will be addressed in due course. We need more implementation 
> experience first, and there are far more pressing problems.
> 
> There were various proposals involving how to process documents using 
> multiple parsers with fallback options, etc, but based on my conversations 
> with browser vendors, that wouldn't ever be widely supported. If you wish 
> to propose this for the spec, please get the browser vendors to implement 
> it first (as an experimental mode, e.g.), to demonstrate that they are 
> willing to do so.

In case there is anybody here who doesn't faithfully follow my blog 
<grin>, I have prototyped MathML + SVG + XLINK in HTML4:

http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2006/12/05/HOWTO-Embed-MathML-and-SVG-into-HTML4

This lead Jacques Distler to modify his MovableType plugin:

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/001065.html

I figure that if the existing FireFox HTML4 parser has an existing test 
suite then modifying the parser to obviate the need for the script is 
likely only a weekend task.  This could be designed in such a way that 
it was only enabled as an about:config option.  Where I would need help 
with is in getting it into the codebase.  (Robert?  You listening?)

- Sam Ruby