XHTML vs HTML

[Daniel0]

No offense, but who told you that debating constitutes repeating yourself over and over again? Dunno if it's a surprise to you, but things aren't true just because you say it is. You need to explain why using XHTML is good practice.

[alphanumetrix]

No offense, but who told you that debating constitutes repeating yourself over and over again? Dunno if it's a surprise to you, but things aren't true just because you say it is. You need to explain why using XHTML is good practice.

No offense, but the whole point of my post was to rationalize why this debate we're having is pointless. I didn't post in here to debate at all. Truth be told, the only reason why I posted in here was to see if there actually was an answer. You see, I wanted an answer, so I was counting on people to either throw my two-cents out, or agree with me. At this point, if there was a definite answer to this question (whether HTML or XHTML is better), someone would have posted. Therefore, I can confidently conclude this is more a matter of opinion or situation (too many variables for there to be an absolute answer), thus making all debating meaningless.

 

I hope I won't need to explain this post, too... 

[Daniel0]

You're on a discussion forum. You discuss (=debate) things on a discussion forum. You're the wrong place if you do not want discussions. It's not a matter of opinion. Unless you have need for additional XML namespaces in your document and you at the same time control all the UAs that will request that document then XHTML is an inferior choice to HTML for reasons I already explained.

 

I don't see how the debate is pointless. Maybe it's pointless because you're unable to argue for your opinions, but I am able to argue for mine? Your entire last post is essentially a red herring. In failing to support your own views you are diverting focus to give the illusion that you are right after all. Of course this is not the case considering that it's irrelevant to the matter at hand.

[Mchl]

I'm disappointed bliljerk101... First you tell us choosing  XHTML over HTML is good practice, now you don't want to tell us why it is so?

[jackpf]

My god, not only is Daniel0's site written in xhtml, but so is yours Mchl!

 

If you're going to argue that something is so wrong and illogical, you should at least make sure your site isn't written in it first

[Daniel0]

I didn't code Wordpress and Mchl didn't code MediaWiki. Maybe you should do a bit of research. Even then, tu quoque is another logical fallacy. There sure have been committed a lot of these recently. If A claims P and A is inconsistent with P, then that doesn't automatically make P false.

[Mchl]

My personal site does not validate at all. I've not been working on it for like... 9 years probably.

The site linked in my profile again uses free open source templates and scripts. It's running MediaWiki and SMF on their default settings (at least as far as markup is concerned). I have next to none time to spend to respond to my community needs, left alone dealing with technical aspects of scripts I did not write.

 

The application I work on currently uses XHTML, but it is running on intranet, where I decide what browser will be used with it... and it will be used with Firefox/Prism. Besides... most of the markup is created on the fly by ExtJS.

 

If I was to create a website now, that would be presented to Internet I would probably go with HTML 4.01. That wouldn't be the case some time ago however, when I was also XHTML fan just because it was new. Now that I know actual differences, I just think XHTML is a bit of an overkill for most uses, especially if IE forces us to use it against specification. Having received engineering education I'm very prejudiced against breaking specifications... especially if I can avoid it with no cost

[alphanumetrix]

You're on a discussion forum. You discuss (=debate) things on a discussion forum. You're the wrong place if you do not want discussions. It's not a matter of opinion. Unless you have need for additional XML namespaces in your document and you at the same time control all the UAs that will request that document then XHTML is an inferior choice to HTML for reasons I already explained.

 

I don't see how the debate is pointless. Maybe it's pointless because you're unable to argue for your opinions, but I am able to argue for mine? Your entire last post is essentially a red herring. In failing to support your own views you are diverting focus to give the illusion that you are right after all. Of course this is not the case considering that it's irrelevant to the matter at hand.

 

You're good. Really good. I'm not so sure I can even beat you in a debate if I tried. I mean, the way you responded to that post... Brilliant. Your response time was excellent, and your interpretation - flawless. I'm curious if you're that good, or if you're just speaking from experience. Perhaps you've used the illusion you spoke of in a similar situation?

 

I made my last post in the hopes of a good response too, but you've definitely exceeded what I thought. I'm less complicated though; I just love these situations. So...what do you interpret from this? *Not the same theory - see if you can get even more creative.

 

As for not being able to argue my point, nice try, but no. We're online (remember?); I'm sure I could just google an argument if need be.

 

If you want to stop, say the word. I don't want banned.

I'm disappointed bliljerk101... First you tell us choosing XHTML over HTML is good practice, now you don't want to tell us why it is so?

 

Don't mean to disappoint; just trying to get an answer.

[jackpf]

Maybe you should do a bit of research.

My apologies, I forgot people don't actually make their own websites anymore, they just copy open-source code.

 

And no, of course it doesn't make "P" invalid, but for A to argue for P, they should generally believe in P and use/promote it.

 

Ok...so now that I am aware of all the facts, if I was about to re-code my entire site, I would put serious consideration as to whether to use html or xhtml; at the time I made my site there didn't seem much difference to me. But...I still don't see the problem with xhtml if you're able to write valid code (which I am) and plan on eventually serving it as xhtml. So I still prefer xhtml

[Daniel0]

So...what do you interpret from this?

 

Dunno... How am I supposed to interpret it? As sarcasm, a case of argumentum ad hominem further trying to diminish the opponent's arguments?

 

No, really though, I spend a lot of time in an academically oriented institution. I'm accustomed with being required to be able to back up whatever I claim, and as such I expect that other people will be able to do the same if they claim something that's not common knowledge. It doesn't help that mathematics is one of my interests where things must be rigorously proven to be considered true, and that rhetoric and argumentation theory are some of my interests as well. I may not necessarily be a master rhetorician, but I find it interesting either way. Rhetoric is an immensely powerful tool. In ancient Greece, rhetoric was the art of being able to argue for something (regardless of its actual truth), but nowadays it's more about being able to communicate efficiently. I find the former really interesting (though also the latter). Consider this: No cats have three tails, a cat has one more tail than no cats, therefore cats have four tails (3+1=4). Of course this is such a mundane thing, and everybody knows that the conclusion is incorrect, but more sophisticated arguments may be more difficult to see through, and in that way people can abuse logic to make untrue things appear true. Of course the logic is invalid, but it's presented in a way that makes it seem plausible.

 

Some people find me annoying (offline as well as online) because I demand people to make proves and to backup their claims. Apparently these people are surprised that I would even demand a such thing to believe them. What surprises me is that these people are surprised though. What surprises me is that they expect me to accept what they say at face value. In rhetoric you have something called ethos. It's essentially a sort of appeal to authority. They seem to put themselves in a position of authority (not necessarily in terms of power, but more as knowledge) and as such regard their own words as true, and in doing that they justify that they do not have to support what they say with factual information. People generally aren't authorities in the subjects they are talking about though. As a matter of fact, my experience is that a lot of people talk about things they don't know anything about all the time. The problem is that the more you observe that, the more you perceive people to generally be stupid.

 

As for not being able to argue my point, nice try, but no. We're online (remember?); I'm sure I could just google an argument if need be.

 

Indeed we're on the internet, but the internet exists in the same world you and I exist in, and in this instance it's only a means of communication. We could have just as well discussed this face to face.

 

If you want to stop, say the word. I don't want banned. 

 

I don't believe in censorship. I wouldn't dream of banning someone just because their opinions contrast mine.

[Daniel0]

My apologies, I forgot people don't actually make their own websites anymore, they just copy open-source code.

 

It all boils down to cost and time. I cannot justify creating my own website from scratch when there are software available that will do it for me in no time. I am competent enough to write a blog myself, so calling it a learning experience wouldn't work. I have a limited amount of time, and my time is worth money. The overhead that comes with writing my own doesn't outweigh the benefits, and as such I won't do it.

 

It's the same reason why you aren't going to just switch all your markup from XHTML to HTML. Your time is worth something too, and it takes time to convert it. You don't get any immediate benefit from doing it and as such you wouldn't want to do it unless you start an entirely new project or are going to otherwise rewrite your current project for other reasons.

 

And no, of course it doesn't make "P" invalid, but for A to argue for P, they should generally believe in P and use/promote it.

 

That brings us into ethics, and everybody don't always have the same ethical values. You can claim a person to be hypocritical if they're inconsistent with what they say, but hypocrisy doesn't always imply that the person's claims are untrue.

 

Double standards can be fallacious though. Imagine that someone says that killing is bad, but that self-defense is okay. These two claims are incompatible, they're logical contradictions. It's not possible for both things to be true at the same time.

[alphanumetrix]

Wow... you must really type fast.

 

No, you were very far from the interpretation I was hoping you would give. I was by no means discrediting you. In fact it was quite the oposite. I reversed my strategy (for no purpose other than testing your ability to interpret), based entirely on how you interpreted my last post. In fact, it was the same strategy as you interlreted the first time (you were wrong the first time though). I created an illusion to make it seem as though I am ultimately right, but I in turn asked you to call me out on something different, challenging your ability.

 

You see, I was seeing if you could call me out on the test/game (whatever you want to call it). Of course, you can't know for sure, so I was expecting different scenarios to be layed out (probably how I would go about explaining it). If you thought about it, you may have been able to realize this. From here, I'd easily be able to manipulate my story to best fit whatever I wanted. I could even go back to what you originally said, me creating an illusion. This mixes things up and gives me the upper-hand either way.

 

Clearly, the difference between you and I would be apathy. A person such as yourself would probably regard me as stupid for this, whereas I would regard you as ignorant for the contrary. I will stop there (please do not call me on this, as I will refuse to further explain).

 

I think you may have missed my point about us being on the Internet (I figured you'd understand as I wrote it). When I speak of us being online, I mean even if I knew nothing about it, I could find a good argument to support XHTML via Google. Also, because were online, and not speaking face-to-face, I have a substantial amount of time to build an argument.

 

Your cat analogy was overkill. I get your point.

 

I'm bored now. Unless you can think of something else to debate/think about, I'm probably done. BTW, how old are you (if you don't mind me asking)?

[jackpf]

Ahem, drifting away from psychology...

 

Yeah...I'm not really into those "do as I say, not as I do" type things...

 

And I'd personally be ashamed of myself for having my site built on open source software. My forum is obviously nowhere near as good as this forum, but I still think it's awesome because I made it, I'd never dream of using open source software. Same thing with my blog compared to WordPress or whatever, but I still use it because I made it.

 

I don't know, maybe I just have too much time on my hands...

[Mchl]

That's most likely the case The very first version of a site that's linked from my profile was created entirely by me. However, as the community grew, so did its needs. At the same time I was having less and less time to spend on my hobby. It's just a matter of calculating costs and profits. I really wish I could spend as much time as I want on things like these.... unfortunately I can't.

[Daniel0]

And I'd personally be ashamed of myself for having my site built on open source software. My forum is obviously nowhere near as good as this forum, but I still think it's awesome because I made it, I'd never dream of using open source software. Same thing with my blog compared to WordPress or whatever, but I still use it because I made it.

 

I don't know, maybe I just have too much time on my hands...

 

Oh yeah? I guess you made your own clothes, you hunted and slaughtered, prepared the animals you eat. You also built your own house, your own computer (including its components), programmed your own operating system and all the software the runs on it too. Then you made your own web server.

 

In the real world, nobody makes everything themselves. Nobody has all the skills that are required, and few have the time. Doing everything from scratch is infeasible in the long run. In the business world you will likely be required to work on stuff other people made (and sometimes that stuff really sucks). They will be paying you for your time, and they will probably not accept that you need more time just because you want to do it from scratch.

 

Wow... you must really type fast.

 

Last I checked, around 100 WPM. Not extremely fast, but not slow either.

 

No, you were very far from the interpretation I was hoping you would give.

 

I didn't mean to offer a real interpretation. Instead I decided to explain the reason why I argue the way I do and why I always demand from people that they back up whatever they claim. My "overkill cat analogy" was part of that. It was intentionally simplified and overkill to illustrate how you can abuse logic to make two true premises support a false conclusion. The cat thing wasn't part of an argument against you.

 

This mixes things up and gives me the upper-hand either way.

 

Not really, because it's still ignoratio elenchi.

 

I think you may have missed my point about us being on the Internet (I figured you'd understand as I wrote it). When I speak of us being online, I mean even if I knew nothing about it, I could find a good argument to support XHTML via Google. Also, because were online, and not speaking face-to-face, I have a substantial amount of time to build an argument.

 

The truth value of an argument doesn't change depending on who made the argument. Whether you made it up yourself or someone else did wouldn't change if it was true, false or perhaps fallacious.

 

Clearly, the difference between you and I would be apathy. A person such as yourself would probably regard me as stupid for this, whereas I would regard you as ignorant for the contrary.

 

You cannot be apathetic on the internet. Communication is comprised of three basic elements: words, intonation, and body language. Studies show that words only account for about 7% of the communication, the remaining 93% are the intonation and body language. This is also why it would be difficult for me to gauge whether you were being sincere or sarcastic in your last post, and thus why I didn't bother because you could always claim the opposite.

 

I will stop there (please do not call me on this, as I will refuse to further explain). [...] I'm bored now. Unless you can think of something else to debate/think about, I'm probably done.

 

My experience shows that this is nearly never the case. People will for the most part respond when being refuted. I didn't bother to check, but I believe already said something along the lines of that already, but you did respond to my further messages.

[jackpf]

Oh yeah? I guess you made your own clothes...

Lol no, but I'm not a clothes designer. I am, however, a programmer, so it only seems requisite that I program my own stuff. It makes sense. But I do see your point. I just take pride in my website and prefer to use code I have written myself

[Mchl]

It's understandable. It's your personal site. It's your place to hone your skills, to show off, to do whatever you like. You're not bound by time or financial constraints to create it. Nothing serious happens if it goes down etc...

[alphanumetrix]

And I'd personally be ashamed of myself for having my site built on open source software. My forum is obviously nowhere near as good as this forum, but I still think it's awesome because I made it, I'd never dream of using open source software. Same thing with my blog compared to WordPress or whatever, but I still use it because I made it.

 

I don't know, maybe I just have too much time on my hands...

 

Oh yeah? I guess you made your own clothes, you hunted and slaughtered, prepared the animals you eat. You also built your own house, your own computer (including its components), programmed your own operating system and all the software the runs on it too. Then you made your own web server.

 

In the real world, nobody makes everything themselves. Nobody has all the skills that are required, and few have the time. Doing everything from scratch is infeasible in the long run. In the business world you will likely be required to work on stuff other people made (and sometimes that stuff really sucks). They will be paying you for your time, and they will probably not accept that you need more time just because you want to do it from scratch.

 

Wow... you must really type fast.

 

Last I checked, around 100 WPM. Not extremely fast, but not slow either.

 

No, you were very far from the interpretation I was hoping you would give.

 

I didn't mean to offer a real interpretation. Instead I decided to explain the reason why I argue the way I do and why I always demand from people that they back up whatever they claim. My "overkill cat analogy" was part of that. It was intentionally simplified and overkill to illustrate how you can abuse logic to make two true premises support a false conclusion. The cat thing wasn't part of an argument against you.

 

This mixes things up and gives me the upper-hand either way.

 

Not really, because it's still ignoratio elenchi.

 

I think you may have missed my point about us being on the Internet (I figured you'd understand as I wrote it). When I speak of us being online, I mean even if I knew nothing about it, I could find a good argument to support XHTML via Google. Also, because were online, and not speaking face-to-face, I have a substantial amount of time to build an argument.

 

The truth value of an argument doesn't change depending on who made the argument. Whether you made it up yourself or someone else did wouldn't change if it was true, false or perhaps fallacious.

 

Clearly, the difference between you and I would be apathy. A person such as yourself would probably regard me as stupid for this, whereas I would regard you as ignorant for the contrary.

 

You cannot be apathetic on the internet. Communication is comprised of three basic elements: words, intonation, and body language. Studies show that words only account for about 7% of the communication, the remaining 93% are the intonation and body language. This is also why it would be difficult for me to gauge whether you were being sincere or sarcastic in your last post, and thus why I didn't bother because you could always claim the opposite.

 

I will stop there (please do not call me on this, as I will refuse to further explain). [...] I'm bored now. Unless you can think of something else to debate/think about, I'm probably done.

 

My experience shows that this is nearly never the case. People will for the most part respond when being refuted. I didn't bother to check, but I believe already said something along the lines of that already, but you did respond to my further messages.

 

 

Everyting you've said isn't true. It's all statistical. It's most-commonly true (i'm not just saying that because you actually through statistics in it this time). You seem to fail to realize, or at least refuse to acknowledge, that there are exceptions to everything you've said. Truth is only as true as it's proven. For instance, pluto is no longer declared a planet. Tomorrow people can figure a way why gravity doesn't exist, and why four divided by two is actually seventeen (please don't contradict me with some ridiculous theory as to why this is right - i get it). - this especially applies to the last thing you said "my experience...never...case" - i wouldn't, and still won't, further explain. furthermore, i'm telling you this to further be the exception. you see, and i'm sure you do realize, that me saying this puts my chances of contradicting myself that much higher. frankly, i treat everything outside of my head as irrelevant (truly), so i couldn't care less - shameless as one might say.

 

100 wpm is pretty good. i type about 30 wpm less than you. i was using my phone to reply yesterday though, so everything took significantly longer for me (redundant but i'm bored).

 

One thing you're definitely right on - i can't be apathetic on the internet (entirely at least). I should have simply written lazy or perhaps bipolar (not that I am - just an hyperbole).

 

"ignoratio eleechi" - why are you italicizing all your "big" words? i won't over-read them. frankly, they're not that complicated of words either. this is actually the first of the previous ones you put that i didn't know right off the top of my head.

 

Now, I have the biggest question of all for you... You will probably like this one, too, as you seem to always want to explain things. - Explain why you want to be "explain-able" for everything? And don't say it's because you're from a "educational institution." I mean, give me a reason someone would want to know everything about everything he knows. I could think of several reasons, which I would not be interested in explaining.

 

On top of that question above, answer this if you can: is any of this explaining actually relevant to anything, other than the dopamine it probably floods your brain with?

 

And of course you didn't mean a real interpretation. I just wanted to explain... because I like situations like this. Now, I'm less bored again, so let's keep playing if you're up for it.

 

Rationalizations should be defined as lies people tell themselves to make things easier. That's what I expect you do do for my big questions...rationalize. I mean, what can someone do other than that? -> please answer that without rationalizing...

 

:) :) You are fun to speak with. It's been a while since I've actually used my brain for anything other than what I'm requested to use it for, it seems like. Thank you... I really do enjoy this.

[Daniel0]

Everyting you've said isn't true. It's all statistical. It's most-commonly true (i'm not just saying that because you actually through statistics in it this time). You seem to fail to realize, or at least refuse to acknowledge, that there are exceptions to everything you've said. Truth is only as true as it's proven. For instance, pluto is no longer declared a planet. Tomorrow people can figure a way why gravity doesn't exist, and why four divided by two is actually seventeen (please don't contradict me with some ridiculous theory as to why this is right - i get it). - this especially applies to the last thing you said "my experience...never...case" - i wouldn't, and still won't, further explain. furthermore, i'm telling you this to further be the exception. you see, and i'm sure you do realize, that me saying this puts my chances of contradicting myself that much higher. frankly, i treat everything outside of my head as irrelevant (truly), so i couldn't care less - shameless as one might say.

 

I don't think you understand how science works. First of all, you cannot just redefine things yourself, so you can't just redefine 4, 7, /, and/or = such that 4/7=17. With the current definitions that statement is false in the time of writing. Pluto could be demoted from its planet status because a lot of astronomers gathered and decided that Pluto didn't meet the formal definition of a planet. You alone cannot redefine things, so you cannot redefine any of the entities in the statement 4/7=17 to be true.

 

Secondly, things do not have to be proven in order to be regarded as true (except in mathematics). Nobody has ever proven gravity, and nobody ever will. In order to prove gravity you will have to show that it will always be true. That's impossible, there is no way to do it. You can take an apple from a tree and drop it on some dude's head who is sitting under it. You observe that it falls onto his head. You can do it again, and again, and again. You can do a billion times if you want, but even then you haven't proven that at drop n that the same thing will happen at drop n+1. In physics, and generally in natural science, you work with theories. Gravity is a theory, but it's the best theory we have to explain why things fall down when we drop them (plus loads of other things), so we regard it as true. We regard is as true until someone comes up with a better theory. Not just what one person thinks is better, mind you, but what the majority of the entire scientific community thinks is better. If/when that happens then the old theory will be discarded and the new theory will be adopted.

 

In natural science you essentially work in two types of ways: inductive and deductive. If you work deductively then you make a hypothesis, and through experimentation and observation you draw a series of conclusions that ultimately say whether your hypothesis is true or false. If you, on the other hand, work inductively, then you make a theory based on the observations. That's to say, if you have observed that things generally are in a particular way then it's reasonable to assume that it's a "law".

 

The gravitational theory was induced. Newton was sitting there under the tree peacefully, just chilling. Then suddenly an apple fell onto his head and he was like all "OMGWTF, why did that happen?" Other people might have been like "Duh, are you stupid? Of course it's falling." They're saying that based on their experience. They have experienced that unless something is being artificially held up then it will fall to the ground. As such Newton concluded that there was a universal force that is pulling in all masses simultaneously, and that force was dubbed gravitation.

 

As you see, experience indeed is an important factor when determining the truth of something. Moreover, you did actually make my hypothesis more likely to be true; you did, as foreseen, respond to my rebuttal.

 

Humanities work in a slightly different way. They generally use what's called hermeneutics, which I won't further explain here. Social sciences also work slightly differently. However, common for all of them are that their methodology revolves around concluding something from empirically gathered information. Mathematics is the odd one out in the sense that it's really the only subject where you can prove something to be universally true and thus be purely objective.

 

If you're interested then the full, formal proof that 2+2=4 can be seen here: http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmset.html#trivia. It contains 2452 sub-theorems, totaling 25933 steps. It works all the way down to the axioms.

 

"ignoratio eleechi" - why are you italicizing all your "big" words? i won't over-read them. frankly, they're not that complicated of words either. this is actually the first of the previous ones you put that i didn't know right off the top of my head.

 

It's common practice that when you introduce new terms or expressions that you make typographical changes to make a sort of emphasis. This is mostly done using italicization. It's also common practice that when you are talking about a particular term or expression that's in the sentence itself that you italicize it to indicate that it's some sort of meta reflection so to speak.

 

Just because we are on the internet then it doesn't mean we cannot or should not use proper formatting. You'll also notice that I'll write $var instead of $var (i.e. using mono spaced instead of the standard formatting) to make it stand out and thus being easier to read. You yourself used quotation marks here, which can also be said to be a typographical effect that separates it from the remainder of the sentence.

 

In the link above you'll see the following: "In Principia Mathematica, 1 and 2 are cardinal numbers, [...]". Look at the word "cardinal", it's emphasized because it defines 1 and 2 to be that. "Principia Mathematica" is italicized because it's a stand-alone published work - that's a common typographical practice as well.

 

Now, I have the biggest question of all for you... You will probably like this one, too, as you seem to always want to explain things. - Explain why you want to be "explain-able" for everything? And don't say it's because you're from a "educational institution." I mean, give me a reason someone would want to know everything about everything he knows. I could think of several reasons, which I would not be interested in explaining.

 

For a couple of reasons: 1) Because they're part of my arguments. As mentioned, I don't take what people say for granted, and I don't expect that people will take what I say for granted. As such it is necessary to explain why what I am saying true, and thus incidentally why what the other person is saying is not. 2) This website is dedicated to learning/teaching. Explaining things is an integrated part of that. Just because it's a PHP website doesn't mean we have to confine ourselves to knowledge about PHP.

 

On top of that question above, answer this if you can: is any of this explaining actually relevant to anything, other than the dopamine it probably floods your brain with?

 

See above.

[redarrow]

This put me on the floor,with legs in the air.

 

hahahahahahaha the best comment ever made, the comment has made my year.

 

Oh yeah? I guess you made your own clothes, you hunted and slaughtered, prepared the animals you eat. You also built your own house, your own computer (including its components), programmed your own operating system and all the software the runs on it too. Then you made your own web server.

 

I have never read such a funny comment. sorry keeping that comment pin to the wall.