On Sat, 3 Jun 2006, Henri Sivonen wrote:

>  "Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@p...> wrote:
> 
> > Jukka is going a bit far at the point where he says:
> > 
> > |the HTML 4.01 specification requires that one of three specific 
> > |DOCTYPE declarations be used ...
> > 
> > - since this would appear to rule out ISO HTML as being a bona 
> > fide kind of HTML,
> 
> I think it is quite appropriate to claim that ISO HTML is not 
> conforming HTML *4.01*.

Oh, indeed.  What Jukka said was entirely reasonable within its own 
terms, but what light did it throw on a generic definition of the term 
"HTML document"?  I suppose I was griping more about what he didn't 
say, than about what he did.  Sorry.

Maybe we're losing sight of where this discussion came from:

|> > Just
|> > which part of its definition is forbidding this fragmentary use?
|> > <!DOCTYPE div PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
|> > "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
|> > <div>
|> >     <p>Foo</p>
|> > </div>

It seems entirely plausible to test *that* particular question against 
the HTML/4.01 specification, since it calls-out the HTML/4.01 DTD [1]

But then we have to differentiate the question 'what defines an "HTML 
document" according to this or that specific flavour of HTML?' from
the more general question of 'who is entitled to define the term "HTML 
document" without reference to any specific flavour of HTML, and where 
would we find such a definition?'.

I'm saying that - no matter which specific HTML DTD were to be called 
out from the above DOCTYPE - the result could be an HTML fragment, but 
it would be unreasonable to claim it as an "HTML document".  But I'm 
not sure that I would be able to give you chapter and verse to settle 
that argument authoritiatively.  And no review of definitions of each 
/individual version of HTML/ could suffice to define the term "HTML" 
generically.

regards

[1] Yes, I've reviewed the historic arguments about an SGML DTD not 
defining what we all had thought it did.  But they relied on doing 
things which HTML rules out, but which SGML does not allow to be ruled 
out.  Taken to its logical conclusion, that would result in HTML 
disappearing entirely in a puff of logic.  I didn't want to go there.