Re: HTML and SGML declaration

In message <199511211516.HAA03113@rock.west.ora.com>, Terry Allen writes:
>Dan and I gave different answers to the question of whether an
>HTML document may have a prepended SGML declaration.  Dan pointed to
>the following passage in RFC 1866:
>
>| 3.3. HTML Public Text Identifiers
>| 
>|    To identify information as an HTML document conforming to this
>|    specification, each document must start with one of the following
>|    document type declarations.
>| 
>|    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
>
>and I had in mind ISO 8879 4.283:
>
>"SGML document entity:  The SGML entity that begins an SGML document
>[as distinguished from SUBDOCs and text entities].  It contains, 
>at a minimum, an SGML declaration, a base document type declaration,
>and the start and end (if not all) of a base document element."

See also: 6.2.3 "Implied SGML Declaration"

... the system can imply the SGML declaration ...


>It is not possible to override 4.283 in the HTML spec;

It is possible, and we did it. It's called an application convention.
Just like null end-tags and all that. I don't understand your point.

Dan

Received on Tuesday, 21 November 1995 13:35:10 UTC