Why is XHTML1.1 dated *before* XHTML1.0 ? What is the preferred XHTML today?

Question

I'm not clear on the status of XHTML - v1.0 versus v1.1. Can someone explain which is preferred at this point, and why?

The specs from W3C say that XHTML 1.1 *predates** XHTML 1.0, which is very counter-intuitive, to me:

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/ - W3C Recommendation 31 May 2001

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ - W3C Recommentation, updated 1 August 2002

Also, I noted earlier today that the latest version of htmltidy emits XHTML 1.0, when I request XHTML. Hmmm....Even though the XHTML 1.1 spec is 9 years old, it's still not supported by mainstream tools. That suggests that XHTML 1.1 is either completely unnecessary or spurious.

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Which one should I use if I am authoring pages today? What if I am building tools - should I bother to support both? Or do I need only one?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you open the XHTML 1.0 document and click on the diff-marked version you see that the differences are mostly/only (did not check thorough) formatting and grammar changes.

The original of this document is older than the XHTML 1.1 document, so I would think they just updated the document to comply with a newer format.

Answer 2

Not really my forte, but maybe this article will shed some light.
Also according to wikipedia and w3 there is no question of predating:

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ - W3C Recommentation, 26 January 2000, revised 1 August 2002

Answer 3

As far as I know, XHTML 1.1 was the first fully fledged XML based version of the language. This means that XHTML 1.1 should be served with the application/xhtml+xml mime type.

XHTML 1.0 was added as an intermediate between the fully fledged XML language (XHTML 1.1) and HTML 4 (Mime type text/html).

At least that's my understanding upto this point.

Answer 4

Besides the original XHTML 1.0 documentation is older than 1.1 as answered by others,-

The XHTML 1.1 page you've linked to just describe the structure. The "modules", which actually defines the elements, are listed in http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-modularization/ and the last update is in 2008.