[Finding agreement on a standard for competing markup languages is the hope of W3C with its introduction of XHTML Basic. ]

by Paul Festa -- "With a keen eye on small Web access devices, a major standards organization on Tuesday recommended a stripped-down version of its replacement for HTML.

"The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) gave its seal of approval to Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) Basic, a subset of XHTML that backers hope will impose some discipline on a proliferation of new Web lingos for small computing devices.

"Based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), the full XHTML version is ultimately meant to replace HTML, long known as the lingua franca of the Web. XML, also a W3C recommendation, allows for the creation of new Web languages and the tagging of digital documents to make them easier for computers to read and manipulate.

"First issued nearly a year ago, the full-featured XHTML recommendation so far has failed to make a significant mark on the Web. By supporting XML, new browsers can read XHTML pages, and some groups such as the W3C have begun writing their pages in the markup language.

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