Re: Content-Type for HTML 3.

Terry Allen (terry@ora.com)
Fri, 28 Jul 1995 15:42:04 -0700

Dan writes:
| In message <199507282207.QAA05513@yellow.nmt.edu>, Benjamin C. W. Sittler write
| s:
| >What should the content-type: header for HTML 3 be?
|
| >text/html; level=3
|
| This agrees with:
|
| "Toward Graceful Deployment of Tables in HTML"
| http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/table-deployment.html
|
| which is the closest thing to a spec on this issue. I have had
| no negative comments on this syntax.

But it doesn't deal with Deprecated and Recommended versions of
an HTML DTD (we have them in 2.0), and you note:

Open Issues

Detailed Instructions
We need another document detailing how to this soluion is
implemented with the CERN and NCSA servers, using the multi
feature, and CGI conversion scripts. Volunteers?

HTML 2.5, i.e. 2.0 + tables?
Should we suggest that browser implementors who wish to support
tables, but not the rest of the 3.0 spec should specify
level=2.5 in their Accept: headers?

x-html until 3.0 spec is published?
Since there is no published HTML 3.0 spec, should information
providers use text/x-html; level=3 rather than text/html;
level=3?

So while "text/html; level=3" may be said to agree with this document,
that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I'm not saying it isn't,
only that the issue is far from solved. As Benjamin is using the
DTD in draft-ietf-html-specv3-00.txt , which uses Deprecated and
Recommended, as well as Obsoleted, what is he to do wrt those
variants? Punt in favor of a doctype decl that indicates more clearly
what version of this DTD is involved?

Regards,

-- 
Terry Allen  (terry@ora.com)   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
Editor, Digital Media Group    101 Morris St.
			       Sebastopol, Calif., 95472


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