Re: 3.2 tables and the width attribute
Joe English (joe@trystero.art.com)
Fri, 10 May 1996 11:03:36 PDT
Message-Id: <9605101803.AA25169@trystero.art.com>
To: www-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: 3.2 tables and the width attribute
In-Reply-To: <s19317df.042@wposmtp.nps.navy.mil>
Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 11:03:36 PDT
From: Joe English <joe@trystero.art.com>
Charles Peyton Taylor <CTaylor@wposmtp.nps.navy.mil> wrote:
> I remember some discussion about the percent symbol
> screwing things up in SMGL, but I notice that in
> the HTML 3.2 overview Width="80%" is used. It makes
> sense that the percent symbol is okay within
> quotation marks, but other values for attributes
> can often drop the quotation marks.
Paraphrasing ISO 8879, (which is a little unclear on this issue,
to say the least), the rules are that LIT or LITA delimiters
(" or ' quotes) around attribute values:
* _may be omitted_ if the attribute value contains
nothing but name characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, periods,
and hyphens),
* _must be omitted_ if attribute name minimization is used
(e.g., <DL COMPACT> as shorthand for <DL COMPACT="COMPACT">)
* _must be present_ otherwise.
Note that RFC1866 section 3.2.4 "Attributes" is not quite right;
it has several incorrect and/or misleading statements.
Note also that the underscore "_" is _not_ a legal name character,
so the Netscape-Framesism <A TARGET=_top ...> is illegal
and should be written <A TARGET="_top" ...> instead.
--Joe English
joe@art.com