Re: [Docutils-develop] The HTML writer

[David G. <go...@us...>]

[Adam]
>> No, the output is *not* legal HTML 4 since it is in a XML syntax,
>> not SGML one. There are some differences between XML and SGML in
>> what is allowed. For example empty tags like <this/> do not exist
>> in SGML, and therefore browsers that don't support XHTML (and
>> hence XML) might get confused.

[Dethe]
> While this is true, browsers specifically ignore attributes they
> don't recognize.  By putting a space between the final attribute or
> tagname and the trailing slash (like <this /> or <this
> example="true" /> instead of <this/> older browsers will treat it as
> an unknown attribute and ignore it.

Thanks for clearing that up, Dethe, from a practical angle I hadn't
heard before.  So although perhaps not strictly legal HTML, XHTML is
compatible with HTML 4.  (I won't get into how XML is supposed to be
legal SGML [given suitable low-level magic].)

I was asked to make the writer XHTML-compliant some time ago and
didn't see any harm.  It probably doesn't matter either way; by their
very nature, browsers (and any software dealing with HTML) have to be
lenient and forgiving.

Until there's a concrete example of a modern browser (one which
supports HTML 4 & CSS) which does *not* support XHTML, I'm not
concerned.  I doubt if I'll be concerned even if there *is* such an
example. ;-)

-- 
David Goodger  <go...@us...>  Open-source projects:
  - Python Docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
    (includes reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html)
  - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net/