12.1.4 Specifying output type and file extension

Output type

To specify the HTML or XML output type:

[Options]

; Output = Standard (default, HTML), XHTML, or GenXML (generic XML)

Output=Standard

File extension

To specify the output file extension:

[FDK]

HTMLSuffix=.htm

XMLSuffix=.xml

The default is .htm for standard HTML or XHTML, .xml for generic XML.

Consider XHTML

If you can choose between HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0, consider XHTML. If you might eventually move to XML, the XHTML 1.0 Recommendation is a good way to make a transition into that area:

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/

According to the W3C, XHTML 1.0 "defines an XML serialization for HTML 4". Also, HTML 5 is expected to use XML syntax; see:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/html4-differences/Overview.html

Think about where your output will be displayed. If on the Web, consider the differences among browsers:

http://www.webreview.com/browsers/browsers.shtml

If you use CSS (see §21 Setting up CSS for HTML), some browsers, such as Netscape Navigator and Mozilla, do not display XHTML output properly on the Web; they ignore your CSS files. However, these browsers properly display the same XHTML output viewed locally, and properly display standard HTML output both locally and on the Web.

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