“No, no, you’re confusing HTML/XHTML with XML. XHTML is only one specific type of XML (although a hugely popular one).”

Actually, XHTML is an XML dialect, defined by a DTD. It was also put out to pasture about a year and a half ago. XHTML is dead; the future is HTML5, which also is an XML dialect. XHTML never again shall grace us with its mime type confusions.

XML is the correct choice here. XHTML has been relegated to a historic footnote, and is over.

“Publishing the document in whatever XML format it’s currently in (assuming it’s valid) XML would be the HUGE win”

Er, that’s exactly what they said they were going to do. You told them they didn’t mean XML, they meant XHTML, but they should use XML instead.

No, they meant XML.

“That task can be handled by XSLT after the fact.”

CSS is entirely adequate; browsers can display XML directly, and have been able to do so for quite some time. There is no need to involve transformations for a document which does not change except to be statically added to; it should merely be presented in its final form.

Thomas Bruce:

“That said, I am not sure what magic W3C would bring to the party, but I’m willing to be educated.”

Deep standards knowledge, awareness of cross-technology interoperability issues and the sophistication that comes with experience in marking up difficult documents.

The underlying format is, indeed, XML.

Layering semantic-web technology atop this needs to be done with care and an eye toward the fact that in law and with respect to constitutional questions in particular there is almost no such thing as a neutral label, categorization, or identifier — at least in the eye of some beholders. One of the remarkable things about the CRS document is the objectivity and neutrality with which it approaches its subject. That will be difficult to maintain. And it is impossible to overstate the level of minutiae that some people will find significant — take, for example, all of the tax-resister arguments that adhere to things like the capitalization of the word “citizen”.

That said, I am not sure what magic W3C would bring to the party, but I’m willing to be educated.

As a librarian I think that is absolutely amazing. I would love to import this into a database and be able to map it out.

The possibilities are endless. And yes I agree with John that advisory from W3C would be essential.

I hope the people implementing this will take the time to research existing doctypes before creating one, and make sure that at least one team member is well versed in web ontological technologies to the point of being a borderline zealot. The way this is implemented will need to be set in stone once complete, and it’s important that the doctype provide a broad set of underlying markup data to ensure maximum accessiblity and cross-referencability.

It may be worth seeking advisory from the W3C. This is too important to be done lightly, and I’m sure a W3C staffer will recognize said importance and put the team in touch with the authors of the requisite specifications.

Bravo, Robert Tapella and/or Ellen Miller: you’re doing a thing of such fundamental importance that few people will recognize the effect of your plan until long after it’s executed.

Thank you, Mr. Schuman, for making this and similar things better known.