Re: Beta: Fatal Error: No DOCTYPE specified!

Terje Bless:

> Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net> wrote:

>>4) The phrase talks about a "first line", while the document type
>>declaration in the example takes two lines

> Pedant! :-)

> Yeah, thanks, good catch! I'll fix it ASAP. How does "At the very beginning
> of your document" sound to you?

Well, maybe I missed some important context here, but the DOCTYPE
declaration does not and should not appear at the first line, nor at the
very beginning of an XHTML document that includes an XML declaration.
(Someone should have told the Microsoft programmers that...)

>>5) The example should (as per XHTML 1.0) include a XML declaration

> The XML Declaration is problematic in that current browsers (FSVO
> "current") tend to do undesireable things when faced with one;

True.

> and XHTML
> 1.0 also reccomends against including one in "Appendix C" documents.

Does it?

  XHTML document authors are strongly encouraged to use XML declarations
  in all their documents
  (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/)

In Appendix C we find this:

  For compatibility with these types of legacy browsers, you may want to
  avoid using processing instructions and XML declarations.

"May want to avoid" is not a recommendation against including,
especially in the light of the first quotation.

-- 
Bertilo Wennergren <bertilow@gmx.net> <http://www.bertilow.com>

Received on Friday, 25 October 2002 03:39:57 UTC