Re: Reinstating XHTML-IM (XEP-0071)

Martin. Good afternoon.

On Sun, 15 Mar 2026 13:53:29 +0000
Martin <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Schimon, hi list,
> 
> On 2026-03-15 03:27, Schimon Jehudah via Standards wrote:
> > I am not an XSF member, yet I am interested to reinstate XHTML-IM.
> >
> > I have useful ideas that would be possible with XHTML-IM.  
> 
> I used to be in favour of XHTML-IM, too, but now I'm not convinced
> anymore myself. Let's talk about use cases first. I see:
> 
> 1. Blogging with rich structure, like sections/subsections and tables.
>    If I'm not mistaken, XHTML-IM only has poor support for the former
>    (H1..H6 instead of "real" sections like e.g. DocBook/XML) and no
>    support for the latter.
> 
> 2. Chatting or blogging with enriched syntax, like bold/italic, or
>    clickable links.
> 
> For the former, XHTML-IM as it is now, is not sufficient, IMHO. Both
> XEP-0277: Microblogging over XMPP and XEP-0472: Pubsub Social Feed
> refer to Atom and XHTML, but unfortunately recommend the XHTML-IM
> subset.
> 

I suppose that, the HTML support of XHTML-IM is designedly limited.
I do not think that it should be an issue, and I think that it is fine.

Those who are interested to have a complete XHTML experience, could
utilize Atomsub (XEP-0277 or XEP-0472), and developers can add
publishing capabilities to XMPP clients; and I certainly encourage
developers to do so, and add publishing capabilities to XMPP clients.

> For the latter, we have XEP-0393: Message Styling and XEP-0394:
> Message Markup. Which are missing clickable links, but that could be
> added or we rely on XEP-0511: Link Metadata?
> 

Link Metadata is a recent addition, which I think is good, and is
specifically associated with URI links.

Yet, XHTML-IM is designed to craft custom messages, and unlike
Markdown, XHTML is well defined; and, if XHTML are impressively
crafted, they could even prompt people to think of newer ideas to XMPP.

Of course, XHTML-IM COULD be abused by overwhelming people with a vast
amount of graphics formattings and other custom elements, which might
annoy people.

> Cheers

Schimon
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