Last modified: 2014-03-09 11:49:18 UTC
We are using XHTML 1.0 Transitional - I presume we are using valid XHTML. If so, we should have an option in the software to add an XHTML icon, which individual wikis can customize using skins. I suggest having an option to not display the icon because if the icon is always there, it will be downloaded even if not displayed.
If people want one, they will add it. We're already adding a "powered by MediaWiki" icon, and we don't really want to clutter up the UI.
The parser is not guarenteed to output valid XHTML, see open parser bugs and some parser tests which fail.
I knew there was another reason. ;-)
One could make an extension that did this however, and If one wanted to do it properly one would pass the output through some validator (for instance the w3c html validator which is freely avalible) before displaying it, REOPENING and putting it into extension requests.
(In reply to comment #1) > If people want one, they will add it. We're already adding a "powered byMediaWiki" icon, and we don't really want to clutter up the UI. Why don't we want one? I thought XHTML was part of an effort to reduce the computational power required to view pages, which makes information more accessible, which is the point of this foundation.
The new URL has links to 2 XHTML validators, including the W3C validator, at the time of writing and is linked to from both [[en:HTML]] and [[en:XHTML]].
(In reply to comment #5) > Why don't we want one? I thought XHTML was part of an effort to reduce the > computational power required to view pages, which makes information more > accessible, which is the point of this foundation. But do we need a button saying "this is XHTML" in order to gain this accessibility? And is determining which pages are and which aren't valid actually useful, other than for finding weak points in the code? Or would it be better to work on guaranteeing that the output was *always* valid, whether or not we put a human-readable blob in the UI saying so.
No, we don't need that icon. I am suggesting that it would promote XHTML, however. We promote the organisation and the software (with icons), so why not promote the language - isn't it just as important? Yes, we should work on guaranteeing that the output is *always* valid. However, is this a realistic aim? We have not succeeded yet.
(In reply to comment #8) > No, we don't need that icon. I am suggesting that it would promote XHTML, > however. We promote the organisation and the software (with icons), so why not > promote the language - isn't it just as important? I'm not sure it is as important, really. After all, the canonical version of our content is in an ad-hoc non-standardised syntax defined only by the program it has "evolved" in tandem with. > Yes, we should work on guaranteeing that the output is *always* valid. However, > is this a realistic aim? We have not succeeded yet. Until we do so, though, isn't almost hypocritical to "promote" XHTML - i.e. encouraging others to obtain a standard we have failed to reach. I mean, I'm not dead against doing any of this; it just seems rather a waste of time/effort.
(In reply to comment #5) > Why don't we want one? I thought XHTML was part of an effort to reduce the > computational power required to view pages, which makes information more > accessible, which is the point of this foundation. ...well the design of the icon might not fit with the user's skin, for starters. Slapping images about for the sake of it is a Bad Idea. To my mind, it's a rather cosmetic change. As Rowan says, it seems like a waste of time and effort.
(In reply to comment #9) >> ...so why not promote the language - isn't it just as important? > I'm not sure it is as important, really. [snip] Really? Without the language, isn't the content no more useful than a Chinese text to someone who only knows English? > Until we do so, though, isn't almost hypocritical to "promote" XHTML - i.e. encouraging others to obtain a standard we have failed to reach. The question is not whether we have reached this standard but rather how hard we are trying to do so.
(In reply to comment #10) > ...well the design of the icon might not fit with the user's skin, for starters. That could be said of any icon. > Slapping images about for the sake of it is a Bad Idea. It's not for the sake of it. > To my mind, it's a rather cosmetic change. Won't some people say that for any icon? > As Rowan says, it seems like a waste of time and effort. Having the "valid XHTML" icon will help promote the language, as explained above. It will also help find bugs in the software. How else are people finding the XHTML issues?
(In reply to comment #11) > Really? Without the language, isn't the content no more useful than a Chinese > text to someone who only knows English? But our content isn't *in* XHTML, it's in an ad hoc markup language we call "wikitext"; without a proper parser (which arguably we have not yet got), it is indeed like being in a foreign language. Our imperfect "translation" into XHTML may be an *attempt* to make it easier to process, but it's not really anything to boast about right now. Anyone wanting to machine-process our content right now is as likely to play with the wikitext as the XHTML output; once we've got tools that can consistently produce meaningful XML (and other) formats, it will be worth pointing these out to people. As a debugging tool, I see a little more merit, but it may be that a properly structured wiki2xml parser (as started by Magnus Manske) will make all those issues redundant anyway.
(In reply to comment #13) > But our content isn't *in* XHTML As far as most readers are conerned, it is. Most readers never see the wikitext.
Why is this extension request RESOLVED LATER? There's no reason why it couldn't be implemented now...
(In reply to comment #15) > Why is this extension request RESOLVED LATER? There's no reason why it couldn't be implemented now... If I had to guess, I would say that "resolution" indicates we intend to fix it eventually, but we have more important things to do first. But then no one would ever see it, as it was resolved, so how would we remember?
(In reply to comment #14) > > But our content isn't *in* XHTML > As far as most readers are conerned, it is. Most readers never see the wikitext. True. I guess what I was thinking was that most of our *reusers* (to whom we're promoting our reusability) get the wikitext and do something with that (though this may well involve running it through MediaWiki's "parser" to produce some form of HTML). Ideally, they'd be able to get something more standard, and as I say the most likely avenue for this is Magnus's XML parser, for which there will hopefully be front-ends for things like DocBook and ODF as well as XHTML. I still think it seems weird to talk of "promoting" a standard we're not sure we actually adhere to.
(In reply to comment #17) > I still think it seems weird to talk of "promoting" a standard we're not sure we actually adhere to. But I am sure we are making significant progress. Some people promote things that don't actually exist yet.
If you really want this there are browser plugins that can do it for you.
