doctype tip lacks motivation

I found this draft tip:

  Don't forget to add a doctype - Quality Web Tips
  http://www.w3.org/2001/06tips/Doctype

but I don't think it actually motivates
adding a DOCTYPE.

Does anybody have any evidence that
"browsers may not behave correctly if you
don't set a proper Doctype"?

I think HTML documents should begin
like this...

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
...

That provides all the information I need
to manage the document (i.e. find markup errors
using automated tools) and all the information readers
need in order to understand it.

I know the HTML 4 and XHTML 1.x specs are
still limited by the fact that DTDs are
much more widely deployed than schemas,
but that doesn't really say why users
should bother with a doctype declaration.

The best motivation I can find is...

  A doctype will allow you to use widely-deployed
  DTD-based tools (such as this validation service)
  to find likely errors in your document.

  See also: 
   <a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/03/webdata/xsv">Validator for XML Schema</a>,
  a beta-test service for validating documents
  based on XML Schemas.



-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Monday, 2 December 2002 01:01:17 UTC