[whatwg] text/html for html and xhtml

[Boris Zbarsky]

William F Hammond wrote:
>> Perhaps you should clearly state your definitions of "bad" and "good"
>> in this case?  I'd also like to know, given those definitions, why
>> it's bad for the "bad" documents to drive out the "good", and how you
>> think your proposal will prevent that from happening.
> 
> "Good" and "bad" here apply to document instances.  "Good" means
> compliant xhtml+(mathml|svg)*; "bad", as I casually used it, means
> other.

OK.

> My only point is that a user agent should parse as xml a
> document whose preamble indicates xhtml even when the mimetype is
> text/html. 

That would break a large fraction of popular websites out there.  In 
addition detecting "the preamble" requires assumption of a parsing 
model.  I'm pretty sure one can construct documents that have different 
"preambles" when treated as HTML and XML.

> Or, if that is too hard or too politically difficult,
> going forward the WG should provide a formula for the front of a
> document that asks for an xhtml parse.

What is the benefit over using a MIME type as now, though?

-Boris