Re: assorted HTML and SGML questions

In message <199511190623.BAA16340@csb.bu.edu>, Joe Wells writes:
>>>>>> "lee" == <lee@sq.com>
>>>>>> "Dan" == Daniel W Connolly <connolly@beach.w3.org>
>    Joe> Q: (("text/html" Internet Media Type)) Does text/html forbid
>    Joe> including the SGML declaration (<!SGML ...>)?  I know it forbids
>    Joe> including a document type declaration subset, but the standard is
>    Joe> unclear on whether the SGML declaration is allowed.
>
>  Dan> To identify information as an HTML document conforming to this
>  Dan> specification, each document must start with one of the following
>  Dan> document type declarations.
>
>  Dan> 	<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
>
>  Dan> ...
>
>I must be stupid, but I don't see the information in there.

Nope, I'm the stupid one. I thought you were asking about doctype
declarations, but you were plainly asking about <!SGML ...>
declarations.

The HTML standard says that a user agent _should_ use the supplied
SGML declaration. This is so that user agents that support _more_
than that (e.g. Unicode) are still conforming.


>  Perhaps you
>mean that "must start with ..." implies that there can be nothing before
>the document type declaration.

Well... yes.

>  Does that mean that the following is
>illegal because the first thing is not a document type declaration?
>
>  <!-- document type declaration on next line -- >
>  <!doctype html public "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">

Hmmm... yes, it does. Seems a little over-specified, but there
you have it.

Dan

Received on Sunday, 19 November 1995 01:41:38 UTC