Alan J. Flavell wrote:
> 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".

You have no choice but claim it as "HTML document". It is served from
the served with "Content-Type: text/html", for local files it is served
as the same type by association .html,.htm... --> text/html.

So before any DTD you /have/ to explicetly declare what document you
are serving - this is the only way to make an application to react on
it. This way however you would twist around an HTML code, it is always
/HTML document/ for the recipient: correctly formatted or badly broken
is another issue. Out of curiosity you can serve a page from your
server such as:

Content-Type: text/html\n\n
!@#$%&*


P.S. I'm really glad to see that the discussion at
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html/browse_frm/thread/4fd4218808cd53ce>

triggered your curiosity and the thinking process in whole.

Just try to not put your frustration on Mr.Kesselman - he has nothing
to do with it.