v.Nu: is a conformant XHTML document also, by definition, conformant HTML?

I think the answer is yes. And I'm anticipating someone pointing out how
one implicitly, by definition, follows from the other. Still, I'd be
happier to see a concise, explicit statement to this effect in the HTML
Living Standard.

Perhaps in section 13.1, "Writing documents in the XML syntax":

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/xhtml.html#the-xhtml-syntax

And perhaps also the WHATWG wiki page "HTML vs. XHTML":

https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/HTML_vs._XHTML

I've just seen the following note in section 13.1 of the standard:

> The XML syntax for HTML was formerly referred to as "XHTML", but this
specification does not use that term (among other reasons, because no such
term is used for the HTML syntaxes of MathML and SVG).

"XHTML" is oldspeak, huh? ;-)

In case this email reads like it's eating its own tail, here's a practical
example of what I want.

Suppose I have an XHTML document (er, "an HTML document written in the XML
syntax"?) for which v.Nu reports:

> Using the preset for XHTML...
> The document validates according to the specified schema(s)

I want to know - without actually checking - that, if I were to use v.Nu to
check the same document as HTML, v.Nu would still report "The document
validates...".

Have I gone wrong?

Should I be satisfied that the term "XML syntax for HTML" means,
implicitly, that there is a way to express any HTML using XML syntax, and
that the XML syntax will always be conformant HTML? (And, as a design goal
of the Living Standard, that this will always be true in the future?)

For example, if I couldn't express the HTML boolean attribute hidden using
the XML syntax hidden="hidden", and if that hidden="hidden" syntax wasn't
also conformant HTML, then I'd have a problem.
Fundi Software Pty Ltd  2016  ABN 89 009 120 290


This message has been scanned for malware by Websense. www.websense.com