Re: Doctypes and the dialects of HTML 5

Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz> writes:

> SGML files used
> public identifier in !DOCTYPE to recognize between different document
> types

No they don’t. The notion of “version information” (including a
normative reference to ISO 8879) in document type declarations is a
technical defect (or, optimistically, premature fantasy) in HTML 4 that
hopefully will be transliterated into something useful.

The public text class ‘DTD’ (as in "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN") is
“document type declaration _subset_” in SGML (added emphasis should
explain the problem at hand; it’s about instances, not types).


Practically, ISTM that te easiest route would be to remove the whole
SGML arcane entirely from HTML (not really my personal preference,
since I incidentally use SGML tools for authoring purposes, but that is
not even remotely common practice, might even require a homegrown SGML
declaration in order to work properly, and being pragmatic can be a good
thing, too).


Oh well, if you insist on ‘versions’ and ‘types’ in SGML, start here:
<http://www.pms.ifi.lmu.de/mitarbeiter/ohlbach/multimedia/HYTIME/ISO/clause-A.3.html>
:)

Received on Sunday, 25 March 2007 02:28:29 UTC