Re: Putting many things in DTDs (was Re: What's APPLET doing inside PRE?)

On Thu, 2 Jan 1997, Abigail wrote:

:There are various objections against the use of
:FRAME, BANNER and SPACER, and I don't see why they would suddely go
:away because they appear in HTML Pro.

That is, to an extent a personal decision to make.  We can all talk about
it and some of us can ardently believe that everyone who uses xyz tag is
off the rocker, but it really doesn't matter since it's the authors
prerogative.  I'm presuming of course that everyone looks at their HTML
once in a while, after cleaning up some docs marked up with HTML "editors" 
I'm not too sure.

:More in general, I wonder, what is the point of HTML Pro? Fine, it sums
:all proposed and implemented elements, but so what? What does it gain
:me to have a document which validates according to HTML Pro? AFAIK,
:there isn't a browser which can deal with all that is "allowed" by HTML
:Pro.

One obvious use is in tandem with validators, basically a check to make
sure your markup is valid so you can spot errors without "testing" it on
every browser out there.  And hey, if it still breaks on xyz browser, call
them clueless.  For me, HTML Pro is right up there with the HTML Reference
Manual at Sandia.gov, they both document more tags than I use, and more
tags than any one browser uses.  But they're both essentail resources as
far as I'm concerned.  This is because I don't write for a particular
browser, and the great promise of the web is platform/application
independence, so I'm not very concerned about the fact that the browser
hasn't been written which will render/parse/comprehend my markup
perfectly.  In most cases, just about any browser can handle the stuff I
write just fine, and if there's something special I throw in which is
currently implemented in only one browser it won't make the document
useless on others.  

As for the actual reason for HTMLPro's appearance, I think it was made
necessary since few browser authors out there felt the urge to write a
DTD, and even HTML 3.2 wasn't up to mark since it forsook HTML3,
concentrating on the more widely used tags.

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Received on Thursday, 2 January 1997 02:37:26 UTC