G
Gordon - Adelphia
I have a question regarding xhtml. Why, why, why does the ELEMENT <body>
allow “unblocked” text. HTML does not (though, most browsers will
render). Xhtml (transitional) however allows text nodes (PCDATA).
All of HTML 4, xhtml – transitional, and xhtml-strict allow <div> to
contain “unblocked” text. Does anybody know why – I’m looking for the
philosophy behind allowing such.
I’m in the process of encapsulating xhtml mark-up in content marked xml.
The content mark-up describes technical “facts” – the descriptions are
encapsulations of “ideas” expressed in English. Those encapsulations use
most of the exposition tools available to authors: tables, images, …
most all things allowed in xhtml. Now, for a variety of reasons I do not
want text fragments just hanging – they need to be part of a paragraph
(<p>), a list, a table… Until I started on this project I never paid
close attention to the formal dtds defining xhtml/html variants – I just
always thought “unblocked text” was not allowed. If it were not, I would
be able to simply adopt large portions of those dtds in my dtd (and
easily convert existing html and portions thereof into my compendiums of
xml “wrappered” facts.
I’m hoping that if I could understand the reasoning rational for
allowing “unblocked” text in a div (or, on the extreme case in body), I
might see that I should not be worried about the same in my application.
Thanks for any insight you can supply.
Gordon
allow “unblocked” text. HTML does not (though, most browsers will
render). Xhtml (transitional) however allows text nodes (PCDATA).
All of HTML 4, xhtml – transitional, and xhtml-strict allow <div> to
contain “unblocked” text. Does anybody know why – I’m looking for the
philosophy behind allowing such.
I’m in the process of encapsulating xhtml mark-up in content marked xml.
The content mark-up describes technical “facts” – the descriptions are
encapsulations of “ideas” expressed in English. Those encapsulations use
most of the exposition tools available to authors: tables, images, …
most all things allowed in xhtml. Now, for a variety of reasons I do not
want text fragments just hanging – they need to be part of a paragraph
(<p>), a list, a table… Until I started on this project I never paid
close attention to the formal dtds defining xhtml/html variants – I just
always thought “unblocked text” was not allowed. If it were not, I would
be able to simply adopt large portions of those dtds in my dtd (and
easily convert existing html and portions thereof into my compendiums of
xml “wrappered” facts.
I’m hoping that if I could understand the reasoning rational for
allowing “unblocked” text in a div (or, on the extreme case in body), I
might see that I should not be worried about the same in my application.
Thanks for any insight you can supply.
Gordon
* +(INS|DEL) -- document body -->