Mozilla, Opera and Apple have joined hands to propose W3C to accept HTML 5 (via Ajaxian). Not very surprising since WHATWG, the group working on X/HTML 5, was composed of these three. Consequentially Microsoft’s does not appear anywhere near that.
I think it is time for W3C to take some action. XHTML 2 has been in the works for quite some time and X/HTML 5 seems to ready now. There is a lot of haze around the future of HTML because of the two contenders, W3C needs to take some step to clear it. XHTML 2 is great, but is neither widely supported nor is it backward compatible. X/HTML 5 was worked upon by the open community, so has support from at least the three big browsers and is backward compatible.
Of course, it goes without saying that with Microsoft supporting any of it, majority of the users out there will not benefit from the decision. W3C needs to take lead and decide so that the vendors and the developers get time to adopt the new markup specification.
If you are confused about the whole X/HTML 5 and XHTML 2 competition, following articles will help you:


April 15th, 2007 at 1:51 am
Um, the W3C is taking action. The new HTML WG at the W3C is getting read to start drafting the spec for HTML 5, and all of the browser vendors are on board (including Microsoft).
http://www.w3.org/html/
http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter.html
April 15th, 2007 at 8:08 am
David, thanks for the links. I am aware of the HTML Working Group, but did not know the HTML page. I agree that W3C is taking some effort, but there seems to be a lag in the decisions.
April 15th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
[...] Browser Vendors Pushing For HTML 5 on iface thoughts Mozilla, Opera and Apple have joined hands to propose W3C to accept HTML 5 (via Ajaxian). Not very surprising since WHATWG, the group working on X/HTML 5, was composed of these three. Consequentially Microsoft’s does not appear anywhere near that. (tags: html5 browser) [...]
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:12 pm
[...] They are too busy with their own runtimes to comply with the W3C specifications. At least this time vendors seem to be inline with W3C this time, rather than supporting their own [...]
March 14th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
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