So, I've been reading a lot about people's complaints about XHTML 2. I have one suggestion for most of them: If you don't like it, don't use it. It's not like browsers are magically going to stop supporting older versions of HTML and XHTML any time soon.
I for one will be using XHTML 2. It'll require a lot of redesigning of core parts of Webtoo, but that's okay. I've already done a lot of redesigning on it anyway. For one thing, right now most of Webtoo is using a template language which is psudo-XML. It's not the real thing, it wouldn't validate. Variables are done like <variable> Well, this isn't really an issue, since it's never seen by the web browser, but to make the templates editable or viewable by an XML viewer, they should be changed anyway. Maybe a <data id="variable"> can come in. Heck, if I extend it, I can replace <set> tags with the data version with a 'value'field attached.
So what do I think of XHTML 2? I think it's a great change from the old languages. It's clean, and fairly simple to use. Some peolpe say that it's too complex and nobody will be able to hand code it. I say that's a bunch of BS. People complained that HTML was too hard too, but we got used to it, and many of us hand code it. XForms and XML Events are great looking technologies. I can see the use of XForms completely revolutionizing how Webtoo interacts with it's documents. For editing CMS pages for instance, instead of having to parse out a psudo-XML page, I can have a real XML page and just load it's information into the form. Flexibility like that sounds great to me.
Of course most of us are going to have to support legacy browsers. I have no problems with that. A nice XSTL transformation to turn XHTML 2 into XHTML 1 will do that. It may take some work, but it won't affect Webtoo anyway, since everything is dynamically generated, I could actually have an XHTML 1 template, and an XHTML 2 template, and only deliver the newer one to users who support it. For the backend tools however, like the Filer or the Page Editor, I think I'd rather use XHTML 2 solely. This doesn't affect readers, as they can still view the pages in whatever browser they want, it only affects editors, and I think using a browser like Firefox is 100% recommended already for anyone who is serious about web standards.
Now I know, I'm going to get flack for my opinions on this, the usual '90% of users are using IE'. Do I give a crap? Like I said, they can still read the page. Hell, you can still read the page in a text-based browser if you like, that's the point behind web standards isn't it?
Anyway, enough about that for now. I may re-edit this page as I come across new information, or to respond to feedback.