- From: Henry S. Thompson <ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 29 Oct 96 22:32:07 GMT
- To: "David G. Durand" <dgd@cs.bu.edu> (David G. Durand)
- Cc: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
OK, I'll bite. David is merely the last in a moderately long list (i.e. at least three people :-) who have asserted without any argument that "users won't include a <!DOCTYPE ...>, so we shouldn't require one for well-formedness." I have to say I just don't get it -- why ever not? They're going to have to do a lot of other, more substantial, things differently from what they are used to, if they are hope-to-die HTML mavens, who are the only group I can suppose David et al. have in mind. After all, both SGML fans and total newbies won't have any problem with following this rule. Why is it likely that HTML fans, who after all have at least HEARD of <!DOCTYPE ...>, will ignore this requirement but not, say, the requirement to provide explicit end tags? Or the requirement to quote all attribute values? Seems modest by comparison, and a small price to pay for SGML compatibility. ht
Received on Tuesday, 29 October 1996 17:32:13 UTC