Re: DOCTYPE versioning change proposal (ISSUE-4)

On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 00:00 -0800, Larry Masinter wrote:
> When this specification becomes a W3C Recommendation, a  DOCTYPE with
> a correct html version string will be:
>    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//HTML 5.0//EN”> 

I know that HTML is moving away from its SGML legacy, but it still seems
incongruous to use a public identifier string which does not conform to
FPI syntax[1][2]. A possible DOCTYPE that could be used which does
comply with FPI syntax is:

 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//NONSGML HTML 5.0//EN">

Personally I think the "EN" at the end is unhelpful. It refers to the
fact that the normative specification for HTML is in English - but I've
seen people who change this part of the DOCTYPE to match the language
the document is written in[3] - which is wrong. Given that FPIs don't
need a language indicator at all, the above can be reduced to:

 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//NONSGML HTML 5.0//">

____
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_Public_Identifier#Syntax
2. http://xml.coverpages.org/tauber-fpi.html
3. http://devfiles.myopera.com/articles/570/doctype-ci-url.htm (many
examples)

-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail@tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>

Received on Tuesday, 1 December 2009 09:55:10 UTC