The main one is that even a slightly broken XHTML document will fail to render. HTML is much more forgiving.

With the benefit of hindsight, if the web had been that way from the beginning, I think we would have been better off. The moment you tested your content in any browser, you'd immediately see if it was broken.

But it wasn't something that could get introduced later, after all the broken content that already existed.

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ktpsns an hour ago | parent | next [-]

With all respect - the opposite is true. The web succeeded because HTML and HTTP are easy standards easily writable by humans with text editors. HTML was writable by non-programmers.

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JoshTriplett an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think "parsed strictly" makes something hard; on the contrary, I think it's helpful to make something easy. Clear feedback, easy to test.

But then, I've always preferred strongly typed over stringly typed.

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joshuamorton an hour ago | parent [-]

This imagines HTML as code and not markup.

The reason HTML and markdown are more widely adopted than latex is because the former are more forgiving.

	▲	JoshTriplett an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I am thinking of it as markup. I stand by the point: I think "forgiving" is not a feature in parsing; it's a bug.

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leoc an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That's not obviously so. The adoption of JS wasn't particularly hindered by the fact that users have to match their brackets and generally avoid syntax errors.

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Conan_Kudo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, I think SGML HTML as the first pass was a mistake. All my early websites were XHTML until people called them "bad"...