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Re: Root element specified by DTD ?

From: "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@--.---.-->
To: NULL
Date: 6/3/2006 10:56:00 PM

Joe Kesselman <keshlam-nospam@c...> scripsit:

> http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/global.html#h-7.1
>
> The complicating factor here is the use of the word "should".

I don't see any "should" in the statement "An HTML 4 document is composed of 
three parts:...", which explicitly mentions the <head> element, which by the 
DTD must be nonempty. (The <head> and </head> tags are omissible, but the 
<title> element is not.)

Besides, reading a bit further, under 7.2 you find
"HTML 4.01 specifies three DTDs, so authors must include one of the 
following document type declarations in their documents."

Regarding the more abstract and more vague question what is an "HTML 
document" in general, surely any reasonable definition would require 
syntactic conformance to _some_ published specification (though not 
necessarily one that uses a DTD, for example). The issue was a document that 
contains a DOCTYPE declaration referring to an HTML 4.01 DTD, so what HTML 
specification could it possibly comply with?

> If you need a fully official answer... I haven't checked; are any of
> us members of the (X)HTML Working Group? If not, I'd suggest dropping
> a quick note to www-html@w... and suggesting that it might be good
> to have an erratum which clarifies whether this "should" was intended
> to be "must" or not. (I checked; there isn't one.)

They are clearly not interested in doing such things. Look at the errata:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html4-updates/errata
(The absence of any additions since May 2001 does not mean that no errors 
have been reported.)
HTML 4.01 is closed for all practical purposes, with all the flaws, 
ambiguities, and vagueness.

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/


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