HTML entities and the validator...

Hi!

Question: is there, by any means, anywhere, a definition, if in HTML (concrete: HTML 4.01) and/or it's parent, SGML, it's allowed and valid to shorten an entity (like &amp;) to "&;" (Ampersant + Semikolon) in a given <a href="URL"> with &; instead of &amp;" within an URL construct, so that the W3C Markup Validator is right, in NOT labeling it as an error and let passing it as valid?

Meaning: is it by any means correct and valid, to use "&;" instead of masking a "&" with "&amp;" in a given URL? When NOT valid, why does the W3C Markup Validator say so, while parsing/validating against HTML 4.01 Strict  -- and in contrast (and my expectation) throws an (from my point of view expectable and correct) error, when parsing/validating against XHTML 1.0 Strict while sticking to the Mimetype text/html)?
Validating such an URL against HTML5 also throws an error message. But not so if validated as/against HTML 4.01.

See also my conversation (with an URL example) at 04/20/2011 on IRC channel #html-wg:

from
http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/html-wg/20110420#l-118
to
http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/html-wg/20110420#l-153

Treating it as XHTML 1.0 Strict: error message.
Treating it as HTML5: error message.
Treating it as HTML 4.01 Strict: no warning, no error message, passing, valid.

A bug of the Validator and/or it's parser concerning only HTML 4.01 and/or SGML of NOT throwing an error? Or is this behavior intentional and correct?

Thanks & Regards,
Sierk

Received on Saturday, 23 April 2011 13:49:09 UTC