[whatwg] Using the HTML5 DOCTYPE as a new quirksmode switch

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

Matthew Ratzloff wrote:
> Relying on headers is a good way to get people to ignore that part of the
> specification.  Web designers don't want to worry about headers and
> .htaccess files.  It has to be syntactic.

I think expecting the mass of web designers to worry about doctypes
isn't much less optimistic than expecting them to worry about headers.
Web designs frequently break quite seriously because web authors think
that documents sent over the wire are defined entirely within the
document text itself. e.g. Web authors often seem to imagine a charset
defined in <meta> is determinative, and end up serving gibberish. Like
it or not, effective web delivery depends on correct HTTP headers.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis