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Defining an alternate DOCTYPE for IBM Lotus Notes Domino XPages

10/07/2010 02:24 AM by Chris Toohey

While working on an iWebkit-based XPages framework, I had a need to change the loose.dtd HTML DOCTYPE to xhtml1-strict.dtd. Since setting that value is, quite frankly, one of the many features available to only the bravest of XPage spelunkers (read: there ain't no toggle/UI control for it in the XPage Design pane), I thought I'd share a quick how to.

The default DOCTYPE for an IBM Lotus Notes Domino XPage is:


<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC 
"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

For an iOS device (like the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), I'll want the following DOCTYPE:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC 
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

To change the DOCTYPE, you simply add the following to the xsp.properties:


xsp.html.doctype=<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC 
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Using the xsp.html.doctype parameter in the xsp.properties, you can quickly and rather easily change the IBM Lotus Notes Domino-generated XPage DOCTYPE to meet your specific application needs.

(NOTE: This xsp.properties change will affect all XPages for that specific NotesDatabase application.)

About the author: Chris Toohey

Thought Leadership, Web & Mobile Application Development, Solutions Integration, Technical Writing & Mentoring

A published developer and webmaster of dominoGuru.com, Chris Toohey specializes in platform application development, solutions integration, and evangelism of platform capabilities and best practices.