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

Karl Ove Hufthammer <karl@huftis.org> wrote:

>Terje Bless <link@pobox.com> wrote in
>news:a01060005-1021-BAEEB9D0F5CC11D6A69400039300CF5C@[193.157.66. 10]:
>
>>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.
>
>Well, it's not actually at odds with the Recommendation. <URL:
>http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/appendix/notes.html#h-B.3.3 > only says «We
>*recommend* that authors avoid using all of these features.» [my
>emphasis]

Presumably you mean B.3.7, "Shorthand Markup",
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/appendix/notes.html#h-B.3.7>; which
appears to reflect the world as it was before the publication of Annex K
(TC2 and TC3) to ISO 8879:1986 (WebSGML) and the added ability to
individually enable or disable specific SHORTTAGS features.

The HTML 4.01 Recommendation appears to very clear in it's intent that the
mentioned SHORTTAGS features not be used, and that the only reason they are
not disabled (with "SHORTTAGS NO") is that a subset of the features were in
fact desireable and so could not be turned off.

In fact, as far as I can tell, this portion of WebSGML seems to be directly
in response to concerns raised by the HTML WG about the features described
in B.3.7 of HTML 4.01.


PS. This is best discussed on www-html. CCs set, but not Reply-To.


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Received on Tuesday, 12 November 2002 09:47:49 UTC