- From: Thanasis Kinias <tkinias@optimalco.com>
- Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 22:24:19 -0700
- To: Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org>, Terje Bless <link@tss.no>
- Cc: Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@w3.org>, W3C Validator <www-validator@w3.org>
On Sunday 17 June 2001 18:50, Martin Duerst wrote: > For HTML, there are more ways to start a file, but not > that many more. I know about > > <HTML> (in various case variants, that is) > <!DOCTYPE ... > > Anything else (except of course for <?xml for XHTML )? RE HTML: If you don't require the file to start with the DOCTYPE declaration, then it could start with <head>, <title>, or any of the HEAD elements, as the <html> and <head> start and end tags are optional. It could also start with a comment declaration (<!-- ... -->). For legacy HTML probably the only safe statement is that the first non-whitespace character ought to be a '<'. OTOH the DOCTYPE isn't really optional. For XHTML things are simpler -- there are no optional start tags, and you can only start with the (optional) <?xml or the (mandatory) DOCTYPE declaration. -- Thanasis Kinias Vice President & Manager of Information Systems Optimal LLC Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Received on Wednesday, 20 June 2001 01:24:09 UTC