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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html lang="en" xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy, see www.w3.org" />
<title>XHTML 1.0 - Differences with HTML 4</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="xhtml.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="W3C-REC.css" />
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<h1><a name="diffs" id="diffs">4.</a> Differences with HTML 4</h1>
<div class='subtoc'>
<p><strong>Contents</strong></p>
<ul class='toc'>
<li class='tocline'>4.1. <a href="#h-4.1" class="tocxref">Documents must be well-formed</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.2. <a href="#h-4.2" class="tocxref">Element and attribute names must be in lower case</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.3. <a href="#h-4.3" class="tocxref">For non-empty elements, end tags are required</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.4. <a href="#h-4.4" class="tocxref">Attribute values must always be quoted</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.5. <a href="#h-4.5" class="tocxref">Attribute Minimization</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.6. <a href="#h-4.6" class="tocxref">Empty Elements</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.7. <a href="#h-4.7" class="tocxref">White Space handling in attribute values</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.8. <a href="#h-4.8" class="tocxref">Script and Style elements</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.9. <a href="#h-4.9" class="tocxref">SGML exclusions</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.10. <a href="#h-4.10" class="tocxref">The elements with 'id' and 'name' attributes</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.11. <a href="#h-4.11" class="tocxref">Attributes with pre-defined value sets</a></li>
<li class='tocline'>4.12. <a href="#h-4.12" class="tocxref">Entity references as hex values</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<p><strong>This section is informative.</strong></p>
<p>Due to the fact that XHTML is an XML application, certain practices that were perfectly legal in SGML-based HTML 4 [<a class="nref" href="references.html#ref-html4">HTML4</a>] must be
changed.</p>
<h2><a name="h-4.1" id="h-4.1">4.1.</a> Documents must be well-formed</h2>
<p><a href="definitions.html#wellformed">Well-formedness</a> is a new concept introduced by [<a class="nref" href="references.html#ref-xml">XML</a>]. Essentially this means that all elements must
either have closing tags or be written in a special form (as described below), and that all the elements must nest properly.</p>
<p>Although overlapping is illegal in SGML, it is widely tolerated in existing browsers.</p>
<p><strong><em>CORRECT: nested elements.</em></strong></p>
<div class="good">
<p><p>here is an emphasized <em>paragraph</em>.</p></p>
</div>
<p><strong><em>INCORRECT: overlapping elements</em></strong></p>
<div class="bad">
<p><p>here is an emphasized <em>paragraph.</p></em></p>
</div>
<h2><a name="h-4.2" id="h-4.2">4.2.</a> Element and attribute names must be in lower case</h2>
<p>XHTML documents must use lower case for all HTML element and attribute names. This difference is necessary because XML is case-sensitive e.g. <li> and <LI> are different tags.</p>
<h2><a name="h-4.3" id="h-4.3">4.3.</a> For non-empty elements, end tags are required</h2>
<p>In SGML-based HTML 4 certain elements were permitted to omit the end tag; with the elements that followed implying closure. XML does not allow end tags to be omitted. All elements other than those
declared in the DTD as <code>EMPTY</code> must have an end tag. Elements that are declared in the DTD as <code>EMPTY</code> can have an end tag <em>or</em> can use empty element shorthand (see <a
href="#h-4.6">Empty Elements</a>).</p>
<p><strong><em>CORRECT: terminated elements</em></strong></p>
<div class="good">
<p><p>here is a paragraph.</p><p>here is another paragraph.</p></p>
</div>
<p><strong><em>INCORRECT: unterminated elements</em></strong></p>
<div class="bad">
<p><p>here is a paragraph.<p>here is another paragraph.</p>
</div>
<h2><a name="h-4.4" id="h-4.4">4.4.</a> Attribute values must always be quoted</h2>
<p>All attribute values must be quoted, even those which appear to be numeric.</p>
<p><strong><em>CORRECT: quoted attribute values</em></strong></p>
<div class="good">
<p><td rowspan="3"></p>
</div>
<p><strong><em>INCORRECT: unquoted attribute values</em></strong></p>
<div class="bad">
<p><td rowspan=3></p>
</div>
<h2><a name="h-4.5" id="h-4.5">4.5.</a> Attribute Minimization</h2>
<p>XML does not support attribute minimization. Attribute-value pairs must be written in full. Attribute names such as <code>compact</code> and <code>checked</code> cannot occur in elements without
their value being specified.</p>
<p><strong><em>CORRECT: unminimized attributes</em></strong></p>
<div class="good">
<p><dl compact="compact"></p>
</div>
<p><strong><em>INCORRECT: minimized attributes</em></strong></p>
<div class="bad">
<p><dl compact></p>
</div>
<h2><a name="h-4.6" id="h-4.6">4.6.</a> Empty Elements</h2>
<p>Empty elements must either have an end tag or the start tag must end with <code>/></code>. For instance, <code><br/></code> or <code><hr></hr></code>. See <a href=
"guidelines.html#guidelines">HTML Compatibility Guidelines</a> for information on ways to ensure this is backward compatible with HTML 4 user agents.</p>
<p><strong><em>CORRECT: terminated empty elements</em></strong></p>
<div class="good">
<p><br/><hr/></p>
</div>
<p><strong><em>INCORRECT: unterminated empty elements</em></strong></p>
<div class="bad">
<p><br><hr></p>
</div>
<h2><a name="h-4.7" id="h-4.7">4.7.</a> White Space handling in attribute values</h2>
<p>When user agents process attributes, they do so according to <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#AVNormalize">Section 3.3.3</a> of [<a class="nref" href="references.html#ref-xml">XML</a>]:</p>
<ul>
<li>Strip leading and trailing white space.</li>
<li>Map sequences of one or more white space characters (including line breaks) to a single inter-word space.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="h-4.8" id="h-4.8">4.8.</a> Script and Style elements</h2>
<p>In XHTML, the script and style elements are declared as having <code>#PCDATA</code> content. As a result, <code><</code> and <code>&</code> will be treated as the start of markup, and
entities such as <code>&lt;</code> and <code>&amp;</code> will be recognized as entity references by the XML processor to <code><</code> and <code>&</code> respectively. Wrapping the
content of the script or style element within a <code>CDATA</code> marked section avoids the expansion of these entities.</p>
<div class="good">
<pre>
<script type="text/javascript">
<![CDATA[
... unescaped script content ...
]]>
</script>
</pre>
</div>
<p><code>CDATA</code> sections are recognized by the XML processor and appear as nodes in the Document Object Model, see <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/level-one-core.html#ID-E067D597">Section 1.3</a> of the DOM Level 1 Recommendation [<a class="nref" href="references.html#ref-dom">DOM</a>].</p>
<p>An alternative is to use external script and style documents.</p>
<h2><a name="h-4.9" id="h-4.9">4.9.</a> SGML exclusions</h2>
<p>SGML gives the writer of a DTD the ability to exclude specific elements from being contained within an element. Such prohibitions (called "exclusions") are not possible in XML.</p>
<p>For example, the HTML 4 Strict DTD forbids the nesting of an '<code>a</code>' element within another '<code>a</code>' element to any descendant depth. It is not possible to spell out such
prohibitions in XML. Even though these prohibitions cannot be defined in the DTD, certain elements should not be nested. A summary of such elements and the elements that should not be nested in them
is found in the normative <a href="prohibitions.html#prohibitions">Element Prohibitions</a>.</p>
<h2><a name="h-4.10" id="h-4.10">4.10.</a> The elements with 'id' and 'name' attributes</h2>
<p>HTML 4 defined the <code>name</code> attribute for the elements <code>a</code>, <code>applet</code>, <code>form</code>, <code>frame</code>, <code>iframe</code>, <code>img</code>, and <code>
map</code>. HTML 4 also introduced the <code>id</code> attribute. Both of these attributes are designed to be used as fragment identifiers.</p>
<p>In XML, fragment identifiers are of type <code>ID</code>, and there can only be a single attribute of type <code>ID</code> per element. Therefore, in XHTML 1.0 the <code>id</code> attribute is
defined to be of type <code>ID</code>. In order to ensure that XHTML 1.0 documents are well-structured XML documents, XHTML 1.0 documents MUST use the <code>id</code> attribute when defining fragment
identifiers on the elements listed above. See the <a href="guidelines.html#guidelines">HTML Compatibility Guidelines</a> for information on ensuring such anchors are backward compatible when serving
XHTML documents as media type <code>text/html</code>.</p>
<p>Note that in XHTML 1.0, the <code>name</code> attribute of these elements is formally deprecated, and will be removed in a subsequent version of XHTML.</p>
<h2><a name="h-4.11" id="h-4.11">4.11.</a> Attributes with pre-defined value sets</h2>
<p>HTML 4 and XHTML both have some attributes that have pre-defined and limited sets of values (e.g. the <code>type</code> attribute of the <code>input</code> element). In SGML and XML, these are
called <em>enumerated attributes</em>. Under HTML 4, the interpretation of these values was <em>case-insensitive</em>, so a value of <code>TEXT</code> was equivalent to a value of <code>text</code>.
Under XML, the interpretation of these values is <em>case-sensitive</em>, and in XHTML 1 all of these values are defined in lower-case.</p>
<h2><a name="h-4.12" id="h-4.12">4.12.</a> Entity references as hex values</h2>
<p>SGML and XML both permit references to characters by using hexadecimal values. In SGML these references could be made using either &#Xnn; or &#xnn;. In XML documents, you must use the
lower-case version (i.e. &#xnn;)</p>
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