XHTML < HTML (30th May 2007)

From #html-wg IRC logs today:

hyatt:all using XHTML gets you is slower parsing, loss of key JS functionality, bugs, and (in some browsers) non-incremental rendering
xover:If you assume the input is “perfect” XHTML, no need to deal with possible author borkage.
mjs:well, XML parsers are already an example of what happens then
mjs:although they do have to detect errors so they can fail
mjs:sometimes detecting errors is more work than just handling them the same as the non-error case
mjs:I don’t think there’s an intrinsic simplicity advantage to either HTML or XML parsing; or performance advantage when dealing with conforming content
xover:Code Complexity then?
mjs:XML has simpler error handling rules (hard failure) but the internal subset and other such things make up for it in added complexity
mjs:in any case the parser is a fairly small part of the implementation, all things considered
mjs:most of the core code is DOM, CSS, JavaScript and layout
mjs:and the parts with the hardest algorithms are JS and rendering/layout
xover* can well imagine... *
mjs:DOM does not have too many fancy algorithms required, but it is a fair chunk of code and requires careful thinking to choose the right data structures
hyatt:the rendering/layout code will put hair on your chest.
hyatt* flexes. *

This shouldn’t be news to you, unless you still believe the hype. The lengthier sytax of XML means it takes a bit longer to GET across the Internet, too.