- From: lilley <lilley@afs.mcc.ac.uk>
- Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 00:25:16 +0000 (GMT)
- To: CTaylor@wposmtp.nps.navy.mil (Charles Peyton Taylor)
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
Charles Peyton Taylor wrote: > A question, though: I used to think that the <html></html> > tags were there to let the browser software know that > the document was in HTML format. But if that's so, then > why is it defined as a MIME type on the server? The html start and end tags are used to bracket the document instance. SGML assumes a hierarchical model, and the html element (consisting of <html>stuff</html>) is at the top of the tree. Not all DTDS have a single "top" element. Also, full-blown SGML can have additional declarations - entities, for example - before the "top" element. The HTML 2.0 standard forbids these additional declarations, so there can not be anything between the doctype declaration and the <html> tag. Thus, the <html> tag need not be actually written (because it can always be inferred, like the closing ,/p> can alays be inferred) but by the same token, it is not incorrect to write the <html> and </html> tags. Does that answer your question? -- Chris Lilley, Technical Author and JISC representative to W3C +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Manchester and North Training & Education Centre ( MAN T&EC ) | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Computer Graphics Unit, Email: Chris.Lilley@mcc.ac.uk | | Manchester Computing Centre, Voice: +44 161 275 6045 | | Oxford Road, Manchester, UK. Fax: +44 161 275 6040 | | M13 9PL BioMOO: ChrisL | | Timezone: UTC URI: http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/staff/lilley/ | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
Received on Tuesday, 20 February 1996 19:25:59 UTC