Next message: Terje Bless: "Re: [www-validator] <none>"
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 22:24:19 -0700
From: Thanasis Kinias <tkinias@optimalco.com>
To: Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org>, Terje Bless <link@tss.no>
Cc: Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@w3.org>, W3C Validator <www-validator@w3.org>
Message-id: <01061922241901.01398@localhost.localdomain>
Subject: Re: Better internationalization of validator
On Sunday 17 June 2001 18:50, Martin Duerst wrote:
> For HTML, there are more ways to start a file, but not
> that many more. I know about
>
> <HTML> (in various case variants, that is)
> <!DOCTYPE ...
>
> Anything else (except of course for <?xml for XHTML )?
RE HTML: If you don't require the file to start with the DOCTYPE
declaration, then it could start with <head>, <title>, or any of the HEAD
elements, as the <html> and <head> start and end tags are optional. It could
also start with a comment declaration (<!-- ... -->). For legacy HTML
probably the only safe statement is that the first non-whitespace character
ought to be a '<'.
OTOH the DOCTYPE isn't really optional.
For XHTML things are simpler -- there are no optional start tags, and you can
only start with the (optional) <?xml or the (mandatory) DOCTYPE declaration.
--
Thanasis Kinias
Vice President & Manager of Information Systems
Optimal LLC
Scottsdale, Arizona, USA