What type of document is HTML5?

Question

I know that XHTML is intended to be an XML-valid document (e.g., all tags are closed like <br/>). However, HTML5 is certainly not this way. What "type" of document is it?

In other words: is there a name for a document which is "text and angle-bracket-enclosed tags with optional attributes, and which may optionally be closed"?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5558502/is-html5-valid-xml — felipsmartins, Jun 16 '15 at 18:45
HTML is based on SGML; XHTML is based on XML, not much more one could say about it. — , Jun 16 '15 at 18:45
@felipsmartins Thanks for the link, but as I've said already in my question, I am aware that HTML5 is not XML. — Robert Martin, Jun 16 '15 at 18:48

Ortomala Lokni · Answer 1 · 2015-08-14T11:19:42.740

The HTML5 specification defines HTML5 as

an abstract language for describing documents and applications, and some APIs for interacting with in-memory representations of resources that use this language.

This abstract language can be transmitted using different concrete syntax

The first one is the HTML syntax associated with the text/html MIME type.
The second one is the XHTML syntax which is an application of XML associated with the application/xhtml+xml MIME type.
Another representation of this abstract language is the in-memory Document Object Model (DOM).

What type of document is HTML5?

1 Answers1