> representing documents for a wide range of purposes across the World Wide 
> Web" seems to make it clear that, the current web-authors are exactly the 
> audience.

My impression is that current "web authors" are generally people writing
advertising copy (or web applications with a high branding content) for
people who want a particular appearence.  They are generally not writing
for the World Wide *Web*, but strictly as leaf nodes forming a web
in the Front Page sense, i.e. a very finite compound document.

My understanding is that XHTML 2.0 is aimed at the sort of authors for
which the web was originally intended, who like deep linking and outgoing
links and care more about the information content than the branding.

Generally "web designer" is a misnomer.  It really means a copywriter for
IE.