Re: sugggestion: HTML 4.01 as default

On Saturday, October 21, 2000 at 14:54, bertilow@hem.passagen.se (Bertilo
Wennergren) wrote:

> Christian Smith:
> 
> > > Good. Now, approximately when will it be a good idea to make this
> > > default to XHTML 1.0, the current HTML recommendation?
> 
> > Why is this even an issue? Both HTML 4.0.x and XHTML 1.0 REQUIRE the
> > presence of a DOCTYPE. If the DOCTYPE is missing the file is not
> > valid. Simple as that, no? 
> 
> Not quite. Even when the validator has noted this error, the lack of a
> DOCTYPE, it is still useful to parse the rest of the doc, noting other
> errors, and in doing that it must suppose an _intended_ DOCTYPE.

If this is what is desired (and I'm not really sure this is more desirable
than just reporting the absense of a DOCTYPE and saying "no futher parsing
is possible without a doctype") than the thing to do might be this

Either:

1) Check to see if there is a DOCTYPE. If there is, validate against this.

2) If there is no DOCTYPE, scan the document for XML hints. If there are
hints that the file is an XML document use the latest XHTML standard to
validate the document. If there are no XML hints then validate against the
latest HTML standard.

Or:

1) Provide a method (via a popup) that allows the user to specify a
doctype to validate the document against. 

2) There should also be an option (via a checkbox which defaults to on) to
have a doctype in the document overide the selected value in the popup.

As I said, I'm not convinced that either of these are better than just
reporting a single error re the missing doctype and a note that no further
parsing will be done.

-- 
Christian Smith  |  csmith@barebones.com  |  http://web.barebones.com
PGP Fingerprint  -  60E5 2216 97D2 1D1A B923 F036 00A9 CEC0 D411 FA89

Received on Saturday, 21 October 2000 09:37:10 UTC