- From: J. David Bryan <jdbryan@acm.org>
- Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 01:14:33 -0500
- To: HTML Tidy List <html-tidy@w3.org>
On 22 Mar 2001, at 10:05, Eric Richards wrote: > On the first line there is, > -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN Presuming that the rest of the DOCTYPE that contains this FPI (formal public identifier) is correctly formed, then this indicates that the content corresponds to the HTML 4.01 Transitional specification. HTML 4.01 Transitional is one of several HTML specifications that HTML Tidy recognizes. Note that FPIs must exactly match the strings given in the associated HTML standards in order to comply with those standards. > SO I GET TIDY TO CHECK IT OVER, AND I GET THE MESSAGE BELOW > > Tidy (vers 4th August 2000) Parsing "file.htm" > > file.htm: Doctype given is "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" This message is restating the FPI from the DOCTYPE in your file. > file.htm: Document content looks like HTML 4.01 Transitional This message is giving a *description* of the file content. In other words, it is stating that the file appears to be HTML 4.01 of the transitional variety. It is not restating the FPI. > SO THEN I TAKE OFF "//EN" THEN IT SAYS > > -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional Now you have supplied an FPI that does not correspond to any of the HTML standards. Therefore, Tidy attempts to determine the HTML standard employed by examining the content of your file. > Tidy (vers 4th August 2000) Parsing "file.htm" > > file.htm: Doctype given is "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional" > file.htm: Document content looks like HTML 3.2 Tidy is reporting that you are employing HTML constructs that first appeared in HTML 3.2. In other words, the earliest HTML standard that covers all of the tags and attributes used in your file is HTML 3.2. > SO THEN I CHANGE 4.01 TO 3.2 AND GET THE NEXT MESSAGE. > > Tidy (vers 4th August 2000) Parsing "file.htm" > > file.htm: Doctype given is "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Transitional" Again, this FPI does not correspond to any HTML standard, so Tidy must examine the contents to infer the standard used. As the contents have not changed, Tidy again reports that it appears to be HTML 3.2. > VERY STRANGE? Not strange, but simply a misinterpretation of what Tidy is stating. The first message reporting that "Document content looks like HTML 4.01 Transitional" is informative; it's not a directive to change the FPI in the DOCTYPE. > OR WAS IT A 3.2 ALL ALONG It was HTML 3.2 all along. However, there are some HTML 3.2 documents that are also compliant with the HTML 4.01 specification, and for these documents, marking them as HTML 4.01 is valid as well and is recommended by the HTML 4.01 specification. -- Dave
Received on Thursday, 22 March 2001 01:14:39 UTC