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

[Elliotte Harold]

Michel Fortin wrote:

> What is really important is that authors understand better that HTML 
> must be served as text/html and that XHTML must be served with an xml 
> media type. If the validator enforce that, then I think it'll be 
> sufficient.


That's only plausible if

1. All browsers that accept XHTML served as text/html accept XHTML 
served as application/xhtml+xml.

2. Document authors can control the MIME types their documents are 
served with.

Neither is true today. Neither is likely to be true within the next 
couple of years, probably longer. They should be true by all means, but 
they aren't.

Given that fact of the installed base, I cannot accept that it is wrong 
to serve XHTML as text/html, and I'm afraid any effort that depends 
critically on that happening is doomed.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
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