- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:28:44 +0100
- To: "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Cc: "Dr. Olaf Hoffmann" <Dr.O.Hoffmann@gmx.de>, public-html@w3.org
Tab Atkins Jr., Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:00:32 -0600: > It doesn't mutate, because it isn't, by itself, an XHTML file. It's a > bag of bits. It can be interpreted as XHTML, or HTML, or plaintext, > or a bitmap for that matter. Interpretation happens at many places/levels: author, OS, editor, Web server. > Files don't carry around an essential > identity, they obtain one when you Indeed, humans also interpret what files are. > choose to interpret them in a particular way. > > That's why there was never any such thing as "XHTML served as > text/html". So there never were something like "SGML-inspired-HTML served as text/HTML" either then? OK. I can always buy the argument if you put it like that. > It was always HTML, albeit with some slightly invalid > syntax inspired by the XHTML syntax which browsers tolerated/ignored. I thought you said it was a bag of bits? Anyway: The syntax of such a file doesn't suddenly degrade from /being/ XHTML to being simply /inspired/ by XHTML, just because it is served as text/HTML. > If they served it as application/xhtml+xml, then it would have been > XHTML. Even at that point it is still only a bag of bits. For example: IE might perform a sniff and interpret it as text/HTML. -- leif halvard silli
Received on Thursday, 21 January 2010 18:29:18 UTC