- From: Tim Bagot <tsb-w3-validator-0003@earth.li>
- Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 01:11:51 +0000 (UTC)
- To: W3C Validator <www-validator@w3.org>
At 2001-03-06T16:31-0500, Liam Quinn wrote:-
> On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Terje Bless wrote:
>
> > On 27.02.01 at 13:33, Liam Quinn <liam@htmlhelp.com> wrote:
> > >I don't think that is correct. The HTML 2.0 standard says [1] "To
> > >identify information as an HTML document conforming to this specification,
> > >each document must start with one of the following document type
> > >declarations."
However, I don't think that this means that a document not starting with
one of the listed doctype declarations necessarily does not conform to the
specification - it simply does not _identify_ itself as a conformant
document.
> > IIRC, we've rehashed this a couple of times and the conclusion was that
> > HTML 2.0 is the _only_ version of HTML that makes the DOCTYPE declaration
> > optional
>
> This assertion is frequently made, but the quotation that I cited proves
> the assertion wrong.
Yes, but just a few lines later:-
NOTE - If the body of a `text/html' message entity does not begin
with a document type declaration, an HTML user agent should infer
the above document type declaration. [-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN]
HTML 3.2 and 4.0(1) all require a suitable doctype declaration for all
douments, and so do not modify this rule.
Tim Bagot
Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2001 20:11:59 UTC