I was just looking at the draft for XHTML 2.0. The plans are for XHTML 2.0 to break backwards compatibility with XHTML 1.1. In fact, it seems as though the working group has no concern at all for compatibility, although familiarity seems to be a concern. (What I mean is, they apparently feel that XHTML 2.0 should be sufficiently similar to HTML that writers will find it familiar.)
Overall, I am pleased with the draft. Compatibility is not really so much of an issue if you have cascading style sheets.
The working group seems to be really striving for separation of structure and presentation. That's a good thing. But I hope not too much of a good thing. Take the <i> tag, for example. It can be replaced by <em>. But sometimes you really do need the <i> tag. The titles of books are italicized, but the <em> tag really doesn't apply, because you are not emphasizing the title, just following the convention of italicizing it. Of course you could do this with the <span> tag, but the <span> tag is really just a presentation tag. The most natural thing to do is to invent your own tag, say <btitle>, then use a style sheet rule to indicate that it should be italicized.
Posted by Doug Sauder at January 15, 2003 11:43 PM