inconsistency between html spec and validator

From: Thiemo Nagel <thiemonagel@gmx.de> Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 19:05:32 +0200 Message-ID: <3D0A225C.E9373F74@gmx.de> To: www-validator@w3.org · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0+W3C-0.50 : Thursday, 1 October 2009 14:48:45 GMT

Hello,

I believe there is an inconsitency between HTML 4.01 spec and validator
behaviour.

The parser validates this as correct:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
	<head>
		<title>Title</title>
	</head>

	<body>
		<a href="bla"onclick="blupp">linktext</a>
		<a
		href="bla" onclick="blupp">linktext</a>
	</body>
</html>

I believe it to be incorrect. HTML 4.01 spec states that attribute-value
pairs are seperated by spaces [1] whereas the above example has the
space ommited or is using whitespace such as newline and tabs and still
validates as correct.

[1]: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3.2.2

I have searched the web for more info about this (I think it must be
somewhere in the SGML spec) but have found none.

Any ideas?

best regards,

Thiemo Nagel