15 Mar
2026
15 Mar
'26
8:43 a.m.
Now specifically about XHTML, it's important to
note that XHTML 1.0/1.1
were retired at its standardization body (W3C) in 2018. [1] The XML-
serialization of HTML5 is not recommended (see big warning on [2]). New
rendering engines like Servo do not support XHTML. In other words,
XHTML is basically dead.
The warnings about XML serialization hardly seem relevant to an XML napive
contuxt such as ourselves. If browsers didn't support it at all anymore that
would actually be a possible benefit. However besides all of this the normal
HTML5 syntax ahd parser are in fact defined to accept the XML compatible
syntax (such as self closing tags) so in practise evesy HTML5 complirnt
browser can indeed render XHTML syntax.
Other XML native contexts also use the XML syntax, eg Atom, we are not alone
here.
Instead of reviving XHTML / XHTML-IM / XEP-0071 I would
suggest those
that want to use HTML or XHTML, especially for non-IM usecases, to use
XEP-0481 to transfer HTML5.
I think encoding something with a XML syntax as text for transmission in an
XML native context would be a great tragedy and also require including an
HTML parser, very inconvenient. We don't transmit vcards with the text
syntax for the same reason.