Changes to the 4.0 DTD

At 04:00 PM 9/9/97 -0400, Liam Quinn <liam@htmlhelp.com> wrote:
>I was glancing over the recently updated Cougar DTD at 
><http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Cougar/Cougar.dtd> where I noticed...

Thanks for pointing out the changes and introduction of this
"transitional" DTD.  Were there any notices that this DTD had changed?
I would not have found out about this if Liam hadn't posted.

In addition to the IMG attribute now require ALT and adding the
LONGDESC attribute as described by Liam, another large change I
noticed is that the TD and TH elements can now use the WIDTH
attribute (present in HTML 3.2, absent in the 8-Jul-97
draft of 4.0), as well as the HEIGHT attribute (an extension to
HTML introduced by Netscape).  Interesting.

Furthermore, %reserved is introduced.  It's used with several elements
(see below); I can't quite tell what it's for.

Here's my summary of changes to the DTD.  I guarantee that this list
is *not* complete; it's just my informal list of things I noticed.

Changes to the DTD:
A new "transitional" DOCTYPE is introduced
SPAN adds %reserved attribute(s)
BDO adds %coreattrs
BASEFONT adds the id attribute
FONT adds %coreattrs
DIV adds %reserved attribute(s)
A adds onfocus, onblur and removes shape and coords
MAP removes %coreattrs but adds %attrs
AREA adds %attrs and accesskey
LINK adds charset
IMG makes alt required, adds longdesc (as Liam described)
OBJECT changes align from %oalign to %ialign, removes
       usemap and shapes, and adds archive and %reserved attribute(s)
PARAM adds id
APPLET adds %coreattrs
PRE adds BASEFONT, APPLET, and OBJECT the %pre.exclusion
INPUT adds accesskey and %reserved
SELECT removes onselect, adds %reserved attribute(s)
TEXTAREA adds %reserved attribute(s)
BUTTON adds accesskey and %reserved attribute(s)
TABLE adds %reserved attribute(s)
TD restores width, adds height (pixels)
There's a new FPI for FRAMESET documents (which should make <BODY> 
   optional again) and a switched content for the HTML element:
   frameset documents contain HEAD and FRAMESET elements
   other HTML documents contain HEAD and BODY elements
FRAME adds id
IFRAME adds id
NOFRAMES adds %attrs
NOSCRIPT adds %attrs
-- 
E. Stephen Mack <estephen@emf.net>    http://www.emf.net/~estephen/

Received on Thursday, 11 September 1997 03:54:51 UTC