Is XHTML actually eXtensible?

[Maury Merkin]

Hi,

I manage a couple of Web sites which, occasionally, use foreign (i.e.
non-English, since English is the language of these sites) words. My
elementary school teacher told me that foreign words should be in
italics. Fine. I can easily wrap non-English words in <i>Nahuatl
phrase</i> tags.

But I'd like to know if I can (without toooo much trouble) extend XHTML so
that I can wrap them in new tags, such as <foreign>Nahuatl
phrase</foreign>. (I can use css to say that this should be displayed in
italics.)

The books I own (O'Reilly and others) don't talk about this in enough
detail to be helpful. (Or I don't read very well.)

Thanks to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

Maury

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

[Andreas Prilop]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004, Maury Merkin wrote:

I manage a couple of Web sites which, occasionally, use foreign (i.e.
non-English, since English is the language of these sites) words. My
elementary school teacher told me that foreign words should be in
italics. Fine. I can easily wrap non-English words in <i>Nahuatl
phrase</i> tags.

No need for XHTML; use HTML 4.01 and write, e.g.
<i lang="nah"> ... </i>
or
<i lang="nah" class="nahuatl"> ... </i>
with suitable definition of the class "nahuatl".

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

[Neal]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:39:36 -0400, Maury Merkin <me****@his.com> wrote:

Hi,

I manage a couple of Web sites which, occasionally, use foreign (i.e.
non-English, since English is the language of these sites) words. My
elementary school teacher told me that foreign words should be in
italics. Fine. I can easily wrap non-English words in <i>Nahuatl
phrase</i> tags.

But I'd like to know if I can (without toooo much trouble) extend XHTML
so that I can wrap them in new tags, such as <foreign>Nahuatl
phrase</foreign>. (I can use css to say that this should be displayed
in italics.)

The books I own (O'Reilly and others) don't talk about this in enough
detail to be helpful. (Or I don't read very well.)

Thanks to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

Perhaps a simpler solution, which can be done in HTML as well, is:

<span class="foreign" lang="es">Macarena</span>

Of course in XHTML you also include xml:lang. If you absolutely require
the italics in the no-CSS version, <i class="foreign" lang="es"> is
possible as well. (In this case I might still keep the class in order to
customize the style more completely.)

If you really have your heart set on a <foreign> tag, you have to create a
new dtd which allows the new element. Some information is available at
http://www.w3schools.com/dtd/dtd_intro.asp . I think this is a lot of
unnecessary work unless there are a LOT of new elements required in your
XHTML document.

[Henri Sivonen]

In article <op**************@pyewacket.site>,
"Maury Merkin" <me****@his.com> wrote:

But I'd like to know if I can (without toooo much trouble) extend XHTML so

The 'X' in XHTML stands for "the cool letter X which is associated with
XML". Writing it out as "eXtensible" is about coming up with some word
that can plausibly be abbreviated as 'X'. Don't put too much weight on
the word.

--
Henri Sivonen
hs******@iki.fi
http://iki.fi/hsivonen/
Mozilla Web Author FAQ: http://mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.html

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Neal <ne*****@yahoo.com> wrote:

Of course in XHTML you also include xml:lang.
You _may_ include it.
If you really have your heart set on a <foreign> tag, you have to
create a new dtd which allows the new element. Some information is
available at http://www.w3schools.com/dtd/dtd_intro.asp . I think
this is a lot of unnecessary work unless there are a LOT of new
elements required in your XHTML document.

And it wouldn't be XHTML.

It would be an XML document, with some tags from the XHTML tag soup,
sorry, "namespace", and some other tags.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Neal]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:55:48 +0000 (UTC), Jukka K. Korpela
<jk******@cs.tut.fi> wrote:

Neal <ne*****@yahoo.com> wrote:

Of course in XHTML you also include xml:lang.

You _may_ include it.

I based my assumption on the (admittedly, merely informative) Appendix C
part 7 - if xml:lang isn't "required" I sure wish they had phrased this
better, because the way they put it, it seems to be.

Then again, it _is_ Appendix C... :-/

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Neal <ne*****@yahoo.com> wrote:

I based my assumption on the (admittedly, merely informative)
Appendix C part 7 - if xml:lang isn't "required" I sure wish they had
phrased this better, because the way they put it, it seems to be.

It says "Use both the lang and xml:lang attributes when specifying the
language of an element." This only means that _when_ (if) you specify the
language, Appendix C wants you to say the same thing twice that way.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines by WAI say that you should specify
the language of your document and all changes of language, in the markup.
But that's at a different level, and not many people take it seriously -
even the WAI pages themselves don't do so.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Lachlan Hunt]

Henri Sivonen wrote:

The 'X' in XHTML stands for "the cool letter X which is associated with
XML". Writing it out as "eXtensible" is about coming up with some word
that can plausibly be abbreviated as 'X'. Don't put too much weight on
the word.

But that's what the X in XML stands for too, so I don't understand what
you mean? Although, it is normally written as Extensible, rather than
eXtensible.

--
Lachlan Hunt
http://www.lachy.id.au/

Please direct all spam to ab***@127.0.0.1
Thank you.

[Keith Bowes]

Maury Merkin wrote:

Hi,

I manage a couple of Web sites which, occasionally, use foreign (i.e.
non-English, since English is the language of these sites) words. My
elementary school teacher told me that foreign words should be in
italics. Fine. I can easily wrap non-English words in <i>Nahuatl
phrase</i> tags.

But I'd like to know if I can (without toooo much trouble) extend XHTML
so that I can wrap them in new tags, such as <foreign>Nahuatl
phrase</foreign>. (I can use css to say that this should be displayed
in italics.)

The books I own (O'Reilly and others) don't talk about this in enough
detail to be helpful. (Or I don't read very well.)

Thanks to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

Maury

As others have said, use the lang (xml:lang in XML) attribute with the
CSS :lang pseudo* or use classes (example: using foreign-language words
as synonyms is such a <span lang="fr">faux pas</span> and doesn't make
you any kind of <span lang="de">wunderkind</span> or <span
lang="it">virtuoso</span>).

But XHTML is extensible if you send it as XML, instead of Appendix C tag
soup. In the former case, you just use other namespaces, or style
arbitrary elements (practically same as classes, but without the UA
semantic recognizability of (X)HTML).

[Henri Sivonen]

In article <4t****************@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
Lachlan Hunt <la**********@lachy.id.au.invalid> wrote:

Henri Sivonen wrote:

The 'X' in XHTML stands for "the cool letter X which is associated with
XML". Writing it out as "eXtensible" is about coming up with some word
that can plausibly be abbreviated as 'X'. Don't put too much weight on
the word.

But that's what the X in XML stands for too, so I don't understand what
you mean?

As far as XML goes, "extensible" doesn't mean extending XML itself but
being able to define concrete markup languages on top XML.

With XHTML, the letter 'X' effectively means "XML version of" and coming
up with a word the 'X' is purportedly an abbreviation of seems rather
backronymish to me.

Compare with XUL which stands for "XML User Interface Language"--not
"Extensible User Interface Language".

--
Henri Sivonen
hs******@iki.fi
http://iki.fi/hsivonen/
Mozilla Web Author FAQ: http://mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.html