Re: HTML 3 DTD? [was: frames ]

Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@beach.w3.org)
Tue, 19 Dec 1995 17:33:40 -0500


In message <18437.9512191638@afs.mcc.ac.uk>, lilley writes:

>I have this in my catalog:
>
> -- Ways to refer to Level 3: most general to most specific --
>PUBLIC "-//W3O//DTD W3 HTML 3.0//EN" html-3.dtd
>PUBLIC "-//W3O//DTD W3 HTML 3.0//EN//" html-3.dtd --probably wrong--
>PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 3.0//EN" html-3.dtd
>
>and I use the last one of these in any HTML greater-than-2.0 documents
>I create.

I recommend that folks use public ID's ala:
"-//IETF//DTD HTML ..."
only for DTDs standardized (or in the standardization process)
by the IETF. I suppose HTML 3.0 falls in that category, but...

You're safer not to presume that IETF is the owner of a DTD.

I'm maintaining a catalog of W3C DTD's at:

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html-test/catalog

-- Ways to refer to Level 3: most general to most specific --
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML//EN" html.dtd
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3 1995-03-24//EN" ../html3/html3.dtd

Note that html-test/html.dtd is quite often broken -- it's the DTD
I edit for experimental purposes.

Better yet: use a URL as a system identifier:

<!doctype html system
"http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html3/html3.dtd">

or use both a public identifier and a system identifier:

<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3 1995-03-24//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html3/html3.dtd">

Note that nsgmls supports http: urls as system identifiers, and
it will go over the web and get the DTD!

Dan