Contradiction in HTML 4.01 Specification

Hello,

please let me bring to your attention the following 
contradiction/ambiguity in the HTML 4.01 Specification:

In chapter 16.4.1, there are two contradictionary statements:

"User agents that support frames must only display the contents of a 
NOFRAMES declaration when configured not to display frames."

versus

"NOFRAMES may be used, for example, in a document that is the source of 
a frame and that uses the transitional DTD. This allows authors to 
explain the document's purpose in cases when it is viewed out of the 
frameset or with a user agent that doesn't support frames."

The first statements says that user agents that support (and are 
configured to display) frame MUST NOT display the content of the 
NOFRAMES tag.

Whereas the second statements says, that the content of the NOFRAMES tag 
may be displayed to explain about a document that is viewed out of the 
context of the frameset. This implies, that a user agent that supports 
(and is configured to display) frames MAY display the content of the 
NOFRAMES tag in the event that a page is displayed without the 
surrounding frameset.

Would you please be so kind to resolve this problem?

Personally, I think that the second statement is in error, since there 
is no way to determine, whether a page is part of a frameset or not, if 
you only look at a particular page.

The question did arise during discussion of Mozilla Bug 160500
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=160500

best regards,

Thiemo Nagel

Received on Friday, 2 August 2002 12:01:22 UTC