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It means the group who produced the epub3 spec stated epub3 would be an xhtml version of the HTML5 specification, and that eventually maybe a future epub spec might allow html format instead of xhtml format.
Thankfully, that has pretty much died because the HTML5 spec itself evolved into the WhatWG living html specification controlled by the big browser companies that changes constantly. Meaning any future epub spec that tried to follow it would be constantly chasing its tail.
What the epub spec writers did not understand is that it is actually a lot harder to create tools, search, and parse "loose -some say lazy" html, as opposed to more strict xhtml. So unless all of the big epub/book companies want to hire programmers and invest in all new tooling, keeping the stricter xhtml format is really more cost effective. And with that I agree.
Mend on Sigil is done with a special modified (by us) version of Google's gumbo parser alongside our own xhtml serializer to convert poorly formatted and broken xhtml and html into strict xhtml format. Allowing Sigil itself to function even when the source html/xhtml is flawed.
Hope this helps.
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