HTML FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) List

[Boris Ammerlaan]

About once a week, I post an FAQ pointer in this newsgroup
under the same heading as this post. That pointer has two purposes:

1. To keep regulars from having to post the standard answers to standard
questions again and again; if you have a standard question, you might
save yourself some time by first reading the available material for
this group (i.e. FAQs, tutorials & references).

2. To let posters know what other newsgroups exist where their questions
might get better answers. (E.g. posts about Javascript should go to
comp.lang.javascript, or maybe comp.infosystems.www.authoring.misc)

The FAQ pointer was last updated on: May 13th, 2002

--
Boris Ammerlaan <bo***@stack.nl>, http://www.stack.nl/~boris/
* HTML FAQ: posted bi-weekly & <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/>
* c.i.w.a.h. FAQ List Pointer: posted each week &
<URL:http://www.stack.nl/~boris/HTML/ciwahfaq.html>

[JotM]

"Boris Ammerlaan" <bo***@stack.nl> wrote in message
news:ba***********************@stack.nl...

About once a week, I post an FAQ pointer in this newsgroup
under the same heading as this post. That pointer has two purposes:

1. To keep regulars from having to post the standard answers to standard
questions again and again; if you have a standard question, you might
save yourself some time by first reading the available material for
this group (i.e. FAQs, tutorials & references).

Though it is a shame the section "where to learn about XHTML" still refers
to XHTML 1.0 when the XHTML 1.1 recommendation is about to turn 3 years old.

[JotM]

"Boris Ammerlaan" <bo***@stack.nl> wrote in message
news:ba***********************@stack.nl...

About once a week, I post an FAQ pointer in this newsgroup
under the same heading as this post. That pointer has two purposes:

1. To keep regulars from having to post the standard answers to standard
questions again and again; if you have a standard question, you might
save yourself some time by first reading the available material for
this group (i.e. FAQs, tutorials & references).

Though it is a shame the section "where to learn about XHTML" still refers
to XHTML 1.0 when the XHTML 1.1 recommendation is about to turn 3 years old.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

"JotM" <ja*****@12move.netherlands> wrote:

Though it is a shame the section "where to learn about XHTML" still
refers to XHTML 1.0 when the XHTML 1.1 recommendation is about to
turn 3 years old.

The FAQ is somewhat dusty (allusion to Boutell's FAQ intended), but
there's nothing wrong with the idea of suggesting a look at XHTML 1.0
rather than XHTML 1.1, which is just an exercise in futility.

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

[Jukka K. Korpela]

"JotM" <ja*****@12move.netherlands> wrote:

Though it is a shame the section "where to learn about XHTML" still
refers to XHTML 1.0 when the XHTML 1.1 recommendation is about to
turn 3 years old.

The FAQ is somewhat dusty (allusion to Boutell's FAQ intended), but
there's nothing wrong with the idea of suggesting a look at XHTML 1.0
rather than XHTML 1.1, which is just an exercise in futility.

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

[JotM]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
[snap]

The FAQ is somewhat dusty (allusion to Boutell's FAQ intended), but
there's nothing wrong with the idea of suggesting a look at XHTML 1.0
rather than XHTML 1.1, which is just an exercise in futility.

What is your your opinion with respect to the 2.0 development?

--

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[Jukka K. Korpela]

JotM <me*******************@planet.nl> wrote:

The FAQ is somewhat dusty (allusion to Boutell's FAQ intended), but
there's nothing wrong with the idea of suggesting a look at XHTML 1.0
rather than XHTML 1.1, which is just an exercise in futility.

What is your your opinion with respect to the 2.0 development?

I have expressed some opinions on the wwww-html list, which is probably
the best virtual place for such discussions (unless you work for a W3C
member in a suitable position). Briefly, it seems that XHTML 2.0 has too
little novelties to justify breaking the compatibility with previous
versions of HTML, so I hope (and expect) that it will be more or less
silently abandoned. What we would really need is an updated revision of
HTML 4, maybe with some extra features like <section> that don't break
the compatibility. I guess they might call it XHML 2.2. :-)

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

[Barry Pearson]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
[snip]

What we would really
need is an updated revision of HTML 4, maybe with some extra features
like <section> that don't break the compatibility. I guess they might
call it XHML 2.2. :-)

Sounds good, especially the bit about <section>, which I would also like to
see.

In the meantime, I have a weak imitation that I sometimes use for wrapping
round a header & its accompanying material. It doesn't achieve the same effect
as the "undifferentiated header" of <section>, but it can be used to achieve
progressive indentation to emphasise nested levels of sectioning:

<div class="section>
<h3>Header</h3>
(content goes here)
</div>

(Or any other level of header, of course).

div.section {
margin-left: 3em;
}

By clever use of descendent selectors, perhaps it could be a bit more
imaginative, for example (hm!) reducing font size at increased levels of
sectioning.

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

[Shawn K. Quinn]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

The FAQ is somewhat dusty (allusion to Boutell's FAQ intended), but
there's nothing wrong with the idea of suggesting a look at XHTML 1.0
rather than XHTML 1.1, which is just an exercise in futility.

What exactly do you mean by "an exercise in futility?" Are you saying
widespread acceptance of XHTML 1.1 is unlikely, or something quite
different?

--
Shawn K. Quinn

[Jukka K. Korpela]

"Shawn K. Quinn" <sk*****@xevious.kicks-ass.net> wrote:

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

The FAQ is somewhat dusty (allusion to Boutell's FAQ intended), but
there's nothing wrong with the idea of suggesting a look at XHTML 1.0
rather than XHTML 1.1, which is just an exercise in futility.
What exactly do you mean by "an exercise in futility?"

XHTML 1.0 is an incomplete specification which just plays with syntactic
rules, rewriting HTML 4 in a fairly useless way - by adding some
syntactic restrictions _and_ moving some syntactic restrictions from DTDs
to prose. In effect, it says: if you wanted to make HTML 4 as such an XML
application, this is what it would look like. As it has often been said,
this is _potentially_ useful in _some_ situations, when you have some
_special_ reason to be XML compatible, e.g. when you wish to create
documents that will be processed by XML-capable, SGML-incapable tools.

XHTML 1.1, on the other hand, is just a pointless exercise in
modularization _and_ obfuscation, since it also contains strange changes
to the language.
Are you saying
widespread acceptance of XHTML 1.1 is unlikely, or something quite
different?

I'm saying that acceptance of XHTML 1.1 is irrelevant. People who wish to
play the game can do so just because it makes no difference whether you
use XHTML 1.0 or XHTML 1.1, except that playing by XHTML 1.1 is a little
more difficult (and you cannot use image maps, for example, if you want
your page to work on browsers). If authors, for some odd reason, widely
"accepted" XHTML 1.1, it would be just a quasireligious move, comparable
to the W3C-endorsed iconolatry ("Valid HTML 4.01!" etc.) but less
harmful, since users won't see whether you use HTML 4.01, or XHTML 1.0,
or XHTML 1.1 (unless you start serving XHTML as XHTML).

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