PF/XTech/MarkUp/XHTML2

XHTML2: Issues, Requirements & Tracking

1.1. What is XHTML 2?

XHTML 2 is a general purpose markup language designed for representing documents for a wide range of purposes across the World Wide Web. To this end it does not attempt to be all things to all people, supplying every possible markup idiom, but to supply a generally useful set of elements, with the possibility of extension using the class and role attributes on the span and div elements in combination with style sheets, and attributes from the metadata attributes collection.

1.1.1. Design Aims

In designing XHTML 2, a number of design aims were kept in mind to help direct the design. These included:

• As generic XML as possible: if a facility exists in XML, try to use that rather than duplicating it.
• Less presentation, more structure: use style sheets for defining presentation.
• More usability: within the constraints of XML, try to make the language easy to write, and make the resulting documents easy to use.
• More accessibility: some call it designing for our future selves – the design should be as inclusive as possible.
• Better internationalization: since it is a World Wide Web.
• More device independence: new devices coming online, such as telephones, PDAs, tablets, televisions and so on mean that it is imperative to have a design that allows you to author once and render in different ways on different devices, rather than authoring new versions of the document for each type of device.
• Less scripting: achieving functionality through scripting is difficult for the author and restricts the type of user agent you can use to view the document. We have tried to identify current typical usage, and include those usages in markup.
• Integration with the Semantic Web: make XHTML2 amenable for processing with semantic web tools.

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What PF Can Do to Ensure Robust Native Accessibility in XHTML2

Materials on the MarkUp/XHTML2 Wiki

• XHTML2 Wiki
  • Proposed Element & Attribute Reforms for the Next Draft of XHTML2
    • D - A single letter element to mark dialogue
    • Q - A single letter element to mark all quotes
    • Making Sense of CITE and @cite
    • INS, DEL, and MOD (marking changes/revisions)
    • Initialisms in XHTML2
• Proposal: PRE Element Obsolete & Should Be Removed from the XHTML2 Structural Module
• Proposal: "form" a new pre-defined value for the Role Module

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What Accessibility APIs need from XHTML2

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• PFWG's MarkUp/XHTML2 Activity Wiki Index
• PFWG's XTech Wiki Index
• PFWG Public Web Page
• PFWG Member Confidential Web Page
• PFWG Member Confidential Email Archive
• email archives for wai-xtech (public)