It seems that what I am trying to do will not work. The concept of trying to mix RSS with XHTML seems to be flawed, as illustrated by the W3C feed. While it does validate as proper RSS, it fails miserably when it comes to validating as an XHTML document. This brings up an interesting point in trying to create files that are modular and can be used in multiple name spaces. If XHTML is truly a modular language, then the assumption would be that it would be possible to have it validate as a proper web page by referencing the proper XHTML namespace. However, it does not seem to be so.
The problem arises out of the need for a DTD to be specified as part of the XHTML core structure. The same problem exists in XHTML 2 which could be a problem moving forward. What is needed is for XHTML to chuck this dependency and rely solely on namespaces for the purpose of establishing conventions. After all, if an XHTML 2 document is reformulation of HTML in XML, why would it need a DOCTYPE ? If it continues doing so, it could jeopardize its modularity and will not allow for HTML to converge with other XML formats. Since the goal of the XHTML 2 workgroup has been to reinvent HTML, why did they make that decision? This is a problem that needs to be addressed before the full specification actually comes out.