Re: DOCTYPE definition

Murray Maloney (murray@sco.com)
Mon, 21 Nov 1994 10:21:41 -0500 (EST)


> Maybe it's a FAQ, but I'm a little confused about the use of the
> DOCTYPE definition in HTML 2.0, like
>
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3O//DTD W3 HTML 2.0//EN">
>
> The practical problem is that LaTeX2html and other converters insert
> this tag at the beginning of the translated document, but weblint, the
> tool that I run for HTML syntax checking, complains about its use.
>
> May someone explain me the status of this stuff?

Sure. A conforming SGML document -- HTML is SGML --
must include a doctype declaration to inform the
SGML parser which Document Type Definition (DTD)
it should use as its language definition reference.

So, a conforming HTML 2.0 application should expect
a <!DOCTYPE HTML statement -- but current browsers
won't expect that until new releases are deployed,
although I think that Arena expects it already.

Your converters are doing the right thing -- at least
according to the HTML 2.0 specification which is
currently being developed. Unfortunately, either
your weblint is an older version, the authors have
not been paying attention to HTML 2.0, or they have
decided to wait until it achieves RCF status.

Murray

>
> Thanks
> Alessio Bragadini
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Alessio F. Bragadini - University of Pisa, Europe
> <A href="http://www.di.unipi.it/~abragad/">(more here)</A>
> abragad@di.unipi.it
>
> "You must remember this, a sig is just a sig."
> (From Casablanca)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
===========================================================================
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Murray C. Maloney Internet: murray@sco.com
Technical Publications Writer/Architect Uucp: ...uunet!sco!murray
SCO Canada, Inc. My Phone: (416) 960-4031
130 Bloor Street West, 10th Floor Fax: (416) 922-2704
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1N5 SCO Phone: (416) 922-1937
===========================================================================
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsor member of Davenport Group (ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/davenport/)
Member of IETF HTML Working Group (http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly/html-spec/)
Member of SGML Open Internet and WWW Technical Committee
===========================================================================