FORM and ACTION

From the HTML 2.0 Spec, 
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_8.html#SEC8.1.1

ACTION 
   specifies the action URI for the form. The action URI of a form
   defaults to the base URI of the document (see section Hyperlinks). 

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec/html.dtd

<!ATTLIST FORM
        ACTION CDATA #IMPLIED

From Wilbur/Cougar:
<!ATTLIST FORM
        action    %URL  #REQUIRED  -- server-side form handler --

Why has the action attribute changed from #IMPLIED to #REQUIRED?  

I found this while trying to figure out why lynx was giving me this
error message:

** Bad HTML!!  No form action defined. **

It turns out that a couple spurious </a>'s were hiding in the form,
and that was causing the failure, as lynx properly handles just plain 
<FORM> as 2.0 specifies.

I can see some problems, however, with the contradictory DTD's.  I
thought that anything that was valid under 2.0 should be valid in 3.2
as well.

A page with <FORM> and no action validates fine with 2.0, but gets
this error with the Wilbur DTD (from WebTechs)

sgmls: SGML error at -, line 8 at "M":
       Required ACTION attribute was not specified; may affect processing

-- 
|       |   WPI Lens and Lights | Providing Projection, Audio and Lighting
|       |   100 Institute Road  | services for WPI and beyond since 1962.
| / _|_ | / Worcester, MA 01609 | Greg Marr, Ex-Vice President, gregm@wpi.edu
|/  \|  |/  (508)831-5595, AHSB6| Home Page: http://www.wpi.edu/~gregm/

Received on Monday, 22 July 1996 15:46:38 UTC