Re: SGML SHORTTAGS Feature usage in HTML 4.x Recommendation.

* Terje Bless wrote:

CC narrowed to www-html:

>in attempting to modify the W3C MarkUp Validator to more reliably detect
>and report more forms of erroneous and invalid HTML, it's been brought and
>has come to my attention that the SGML Declaration included with the HTML
>4.01 Recommendation appears to be at odds with both the prose of that
>Recommendation and the majority of User Agent implementations.

This is documented in Appendix B of the specification.

>This allows many things that are not sanctioned by the prose of the HTML
>4.01 Recommendation, are not implemented by any User Agent I am aware of,

Emacs-w3 supports some if not all of the mentioned features. That's why
most XHTML documents are not displayed properly in that browser.

>May I suggest you issue an erratum for the HTML 4.01 Recommendation noting
>that the included SGML Declaration is for compatibility concerns with
>common SGML systems (that no longer exist today) and that the more precise
>SGML Declaration would contain a FEATURES section such as:

Justification? Errata is for errors, SHORTTAG the way it is declared is
not an error, it's been the same in HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0, the later
released HTML 4.0 and finally HTML 4.01. There is no good reason to
change the SGML declaration and thus turn valid documents into invalid
documents. The W3C MarkUp Validator may warn authors using such features
if you like it to, without any change to the specification.

Received on Tuesday, 12 November 2002 00:19:53 UTC