- From: Peter Flynn <pflynn@curia.ucc.ie>
- Date: 20 Sep 1996 01:44:42 +0100
- To: galactus@htmlhelp.com (ArnoudEngelfriet)
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
First tried to ask on www-talk, but unfortunately no one could offer an authoritative answer yet there.. RFC 1866 defines an HTML comment tag as "<!" followed by 0 or more comments followed by ">". A comment is defined as "anything but the '--' sequence, enclosed in '--'". Now, is the following tag a valid comment? <!-- hello---> Yes. The <! is a sequence which signals that what follows is a markup _declaration_, not a piece of markup itself. It's what you use for element and entity declarations in the writing of a DTD (read the HTML DTD to see how). When followed by a comment enclosed in double hyphens, it becomes a comment declaration. Should a parser accept the first '-' of the three as part of the contents, or should it barf on the "->" stuff outside the first comment? What three? I count four hyphens in the example. A parser must accept the example you have given as a valid comment, provided it is validly located in the DTD or instance. There's nothing there to barf at. ///Peter
Received on Thursday, 19 September 1996 20:43:16 UTC