On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 15:00:45 GMT, Matt Silberstein
<Re************ **************@ ix.netcom.com> wrote:
ISTM that XHTML is the more formal, more
structurally coherent and more structurally (not semantically)
restricted system.
XHTML 1.0 is purposely no more restricted in any way than HTML 4.01, it
merely uses a different framework in which to express its restrictions.
(barring a few entirely trivial incompatibiliti es between XML and SGML
as used by HTML).
If XHTML appears different to HTML, this is because of the impositions
of XML, not some new constraint that XHTML 1.0 has added. In many cases
the difference isn't even that big. HTML must have all elements closed,
just as XHTML must. The difference is that SGML allows elements to be
closed by inference from the DTD and the appearance of some other
element that couldn't be contained inside the current element (implying
necessary closure) - XML however doesn't have this ability and so all
elements must be closed explicitly in the document source. Equally HTML
must have its attribute values quoted - unless they're in the small set
of values that are unambiguously distinct from markup, even if unquoted.
HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 express the same underlying document, they
merely vary in some minor syntactical issues.
