> HTML5 could have taken the extra step of defining a canonical XML or XML-compatible DOM encoding, or at least encouraged it.
Yeah and then we could have called it xhtml5. Too bad that does not exist. Oh wait https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/xhtml.html
> But the anti-XML sentiment was explicit and spiteful.
No, xhtml was just a bad idea creating tons of problems and solving none.
> xhtml was just a bad idea creating tons of problems and solving none.
Well an XHTML parser (and serializer) is a lot simpler, which is a pretty meaningful problem to solve.
What problems does xhtml create?