RE: Help with MSHTML

Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com and search on MSHTML.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: html-tidy-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:html-tidy-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of ewitness - Ben Fowler
> Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 3:27 AM
> To: html-tidy@w3.org
> Subject: Help with MSHTML
> 
> 
> Could some kind soul point me to the basic information
> on MSHTML.
> 
> What is it? What creates it?
> 
> The starting point for this enquiry is a set of web
> pages which I have been asked to make suitable for
> the wider public. I have found that most of them contain
> the string
> 
>        <META content="MSHTML 5.50.4134.600" name=GENERATOR>
> 
> and I am trying to work out what it means.
> 
> This META tag being Englished means that the HTML in the
> page was generated by a program or possibly an agent
> which goes by the name MSHTML
> 
> <URL: http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/head/meta.html >
> 
> It is exceedingly difficult to find out very much about
> this MSHTML as web searches pickup huge numbers of pages
> which use this tag, without (of course) being members
> of the special case of web pages that describe web
> pages. This is true even when searching usenet as the 
> prevalence of HTML encumbered posts is now so high.
> 
> Indeed, I have only found one really helpful public
> post, though I dare say that the haystack does contain
> more needles.
> 
>      Wednesday, August 2, 2000
> 
>      The frustration with the O2K format is over the embedding of
>      XML chunks (excuse me, "islands") within strange MSHTML
>      markup that makes any XML parser choke. (And I don't care if
>      Navigator doesn't choke on it--it's not standard HTML because
>      it's not W3C HTML, but a proprietary extension of it.) Why
>      does Microsoft brag[1] about their use of XML in Office if
>      they have erected barriers to the use of this XML by others?
>      Because it's such a trendy standard? It comes off as trying
>      to take credit for providing the advantages of the trendy
>      standard without actually doing so. Of course, this is what
>      marketing people are paid to do. 
> 
>      --Robert DuCharme on the xml-dev mailing list
> 
> Are there any other pointers?
> 
> The actual text of these pages does not merit the term
> 'strange MSHTML markup' and I suspect that the pages
> were made in Dreamweaver, as there appeared to be a
> Dreamweaver site map.
> 
> In which case, I wonder whether the apparent acronym
> MSHTML referers not a variant mark-up language, but is
> the name of a DLL. I suspect that these pages were
> acquired by an e-mail client (or some other internet
> device) and mailled to the people who delivered them
> to me; in which case the string I quoted is not
> pathognomic of FrontPage, Word dddd or similar cheesy
> tools.
> 
> It is still odd why a program that did not generate
> the markup should want to claim that it did in the
> <HEAD> element, falsifying the advertised mark-up quirks,
> and odd that a mere transport 'operative' should
> modify the internals of a document, so I may be
> completely wrong.
> 
> Grateful for further or better info.
> 
> Ben.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 5 February 2002 12:29:05 UTC