XHTML - Doctype and output

[johkar]

What is the proper doctype syntax for XHTML transitional??? Strict? How come XSLT doesn't preserve XHTML when it is compiled (Xalan)? Meaning, <br /> tags become <br> <input /> tags become <input> etc. It seems I am dazed and confused? Any hints or clear online resources appreciated.

John

 

[David Dorward]

What is the proper doctype syntax for XHTML transitional??? Strict? http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html

How come XSLT doesn't preserve XHTML when it is compiled (Xalan)? Meaning, <br /> tags become <br> <input /> tags become <input> etc.

Maybe you have it set to generate HTML output.

 

[Martin Honnen]

What is the proper doctype syntax for XHTML transitional??? Strict? How come XSLT doesn't preserve XHTML when it is compiled (Xalan)? Meaning, <br /> tags become <br> <input /> tags become <input> etc. It seems I am dazed and confused? Any hints or clear online resources appreciated.

Well the XSLT 1.0 output method html is supposed to output according to HTML rules and not XHTML rules thus if you have <xslutput method="html" /> or you happen to have a root result element <html> then the XSLT processor uses the html output method and in HTML a br element in the tree needs to be serialized as <br>, an input element in the tree needs to be serialized as <input>. See http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#section-HTML-Output-Method

Thus if you want to have XHTML as the result of an XSLT 1.0 transformation you need to use <xslutput method="xml" />

Some processors (like Saxon for instance, I don't know about Xalan) also know a special output method called xhtml that outputs XHTML according to the HTML 4.01 backwards compatibility rules given in the XHTML 1.0 specification.

 

[johkar N]

Thank you both for the replies and good info.