Why are HTML5 and XHTML 2 separate standards?

Question

Is there a reason why these two standards are being developed separately? They seem to be solving the same problem but what are the differences and, if they are to remain se

Answer 1

This is largely an accurate explanation, IMO, but it should be noted that HTML5 isn't backwards compatible - new elements like section cannot be styled with CSS in even IE7. Yes, there are JavaScript work-arounds but these aren't sufficient, both because not everyone has JavaScript enabled, far from every developer will become aware of these, and similarly not every developer has the ability to use JavaScript in this way.