HTML5 and well-formedness

Question

Hi,
I'm looking into HTML5 and I'm puzzled why it goes so easy on well-formedness.

<div id="main">  
<DIV ID="main">  
<DIV id=main>

are all valid and produce the same result. I thought with XHTML we moved to XML compliant code at no cost (I don't count closing tags as a cost!). Now the HTML5 spec looks to be written by lazy coders and/or anarchists. The result is that from the start of HTML5 we have two versions: HTML5 and the XML compliant XHTML5. Would you consider it an asset if C would suddenly allow you to write a for construct in the following ways?

for(i = 0; i < 10; i++) {  
for(i = o; i < 1o; i++) {  // you can use "o" instead of "0"  
for(i = 0, i < 10, i++) {  // commas instead of semicolons are alright!  

Frankly, as an XHTML coder since many moons I feel a bit insulted by the HTML5 spec.
Wadya think?
Steven

edit:
Mind the "wadya": would you as a customer accept a letter with "wadya" written instead of "What do you"? :-)

Answer 1

HTML 5 is not an XML dialect like XHTML is.

What made HTML so popular was the fact that it tolerated mistakes, so just about anyone could write an HTML page.

XHTML made is much more difficult, so w3 decided to revert to a non XML standard for HTML 5.

Since XML is stricter than HTML, you can always write your HTML to be XML compliant. Make sure attributes are in lower case, use value delimiters, elements have closing tags and use correct XML escaping where needed.

Answer 2

Better that the spec allows it then it forbids it, everyone does it anyway, and browsers have to error correct.

XHTML never really took off, not least because MSIE never supported it (pretending it is HTML by sending a text/html content type not withstanding).

Answer 3

Honestly, your question answers itself. "We have two different specs." Each spec addresses a different level of conformance, and they do so for a reason. As much as we might loathe the notion of "backwards compatibility," it's a burden we have to bear, and HTML5 is far better at maintaining it than XHTML5 will ever be.

Answer 4

For natural parsing the quotes aren't necessary in the first place.

Regarding case, HTML elements are reserved regardless of case; for example, you can't define your own DiV or Div.

HTML is a markup language where speed and simplicity is a greater priority than consistency.

While arguable, this matters greatly to search engines; documents with quoted attributes and any kind of error are very expensive to process. It's funny -- the quoted example in HTML docs has 'be evil' in quotes; as to say that, not using quotes is not being evil.