Re: [xsl] Closing element required instead of self closing

[Owen Rees <owen.rees@xxxxxx>]

--On Tuesday, July 15, 2008 13:23:00 +0100 Andrew Welch wrote:

> However they do mention XHTML in the 1.0 spec, in fact there's an
> example transforming to XHTML which uses the XML output method:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#section-Document-Example
>
> Perhaps it was thought that the XML output method was sufficient?

If you are using XSLT to transform XML into something to be consumed by an 
HTML user agent it seems to me to make sense to use the HTML output method 
to generate real HTML rather than trying to generate Appendix C style XHTML 
in the hope that the HTML user agent will be able to cope with it.

If you are delivering content as application/xhtml+xml to an agent that 
understands XHTML then any valid serialisation of the XML will do just fine.

Perhaps when XSLT 1.0 was being written it was not anticipated that the 
dubious practice of delivering XHTML as text/html to HTML user agents would 
be so widespread.

If the requirement is to generate XHTML in Appendix C style then given an 
XSLT 2.0 processor, the xhtml output method is the answer. Attempting to 
extend the Appendix C tricks to some other form of XML will create an 
instant legacy system.

--
Owen Rees; speaking personally, and not on behalf of HP.
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