A meditation by Jeffrey Zeldman [via Scripting News]  on what to do with the apparently stupid lack of backwards compatibility in the draft for XHTML 2.0.  Zeldman thinks that it would be probably better to think of XHTML 2 as an entirely different (perhaps better) beast than XHTML and therefore should be renamed.  (Developers might then be more willing to adapt it knowing that we aren't necessary throwing out all the work that has gone into XHTML 1 and HTML 4). 

I am amazed by what XHTML 2.0 might end up looking like.  For example, Zeldman writes:

Five months ago, I underwent a crisis of faith after reading a draft XHTML 2.0 specification that was deliberately incompatible with XHTML 1 and HTML 4. For weeks I was unable to work on my book, Forward Compatibility. The title seemed a lie.

The new spec appeared needlessly complex (too hard for humans). It smashed existing conventions for no reason I could see. Where earlier markup specs had gently discouraged outdated methods, the thing called XHTML 2 burst roaring out of smoke and flame, a scaly hellspawn wielding a bloody butcher's axe.The W3C seemed to have abandoned the notion that the web could move forward without breaking what we already know and use. Standards had been a lie. The sky was falling.

One day I realized XHTML 2 was not coming soon to a browser near me.

Next day I realized the sky was not falling.

W3C does have a problem, but it can be fixed.

I'm amazed by the amount of discussion inspired by Mark Pilgrim's recent crisis of faith in web standards and the W3C.  It's cool to follow this discussion via the automatic linkbacks on Dive Into Mark.

BTW, I'd like to find a defence of the proposed XHTML 2 -- maybe there's one among the links to Mark Pilgrim's post.

[Later:  I found a post in the slashdot post on this topic that I found to be a good rationalization for the XHTML 2.0 draft.  Also a paper at IBM.]