[thelist] The Web's future: XHTML 2.0

[Peter-Paul Koch]

>At IBM developerWorks is a nice article about the (proposed) changes
>in the XHTML 2.0 draft.
>
>The seperation between content and layout is now complete:
>no more <b>, <i>, <tt> or even <br>.

What a nonsense. BR (and WBR, too, for that matter) cannot be expressed with
CSS: there must be a marker in the HTML to show where the break is.

><img> will be replaced by <object> and maybe <h1> ... <h6> will
>also be replaced.
>
>Forms will be completely different

with far more complex syntax that browsers do not understand and is thus
completely useless.

>and in addition to <dl>, <ol>
>and <ul>, there will be <nl>, a navigational list that will only appear
>when active.
>
>Also, frames will be changed in a way it will become bookmark-
>friendly.

Personally I believe that, since XHTML 2.0 does not support these basic tags
any more, it is not HTML and thus completely useless on the WWW.

>http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-xhtml/?t=gr,lnxw01=XHTML20
>
>The question of course is: will we change to XHTML 2.0 and when?

Never.

People haven't even changed to XHTML 1.0 . There is a very interesting
thread going on on XHTML-L, it starts at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/XHTML-L/message/3438 and isn't finished yet.

One conclusion is that using XHTML is only interesting when you want to
treat HTML pages with XML tools.
Other than that, almost no one (on that list, where well known top
developers debate the use of XHTML!) uses it in his/her daily work.

XHTML is just a vague idea without too many practical merits, as I already
said two years ago (http://www.alistapart.com/stories/xhtml)

>The changes are pretty big, without a lot of clear practical advantages. We
>risk a lot of people will say: "fuck W3C standards", with in the end even
>less support for standards/recommendations.
>
>What do you think?

I think exactly that. W3C is on its own trip without so much a glance at
what's really going on and what web developers really need. XHTML 2.0 is a
joke, and a bad one at that.

ppk

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