[Sigia-l] Word HTML - money were my mouth is (was When Should a Manual be Web-based?)

Tue Mar 4 20:55:38 EST 2003

> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On
> Behalf Of Jon Hanna
>  
> > > > It is one thing to generate web pages without HTML error. But
> > > > it is quite another to have the generated HTML deemed "valid"
> > > > with regard to a published version of HTML.
> > >
> > > No, that's one and the same thing. How else do you define "HTML
> > > error" except by saying it differs from what HTML allows?
> >
> > Well, here is an example:
> >
> > <html><head><title>title<body>test</body></html>
> >
> > The above has HTML error even though there is no reference to a
> > published HTML version. If you save the above HTML as an HTML file
> > and have the browser displays it, you won't see "test"
> > displayed. To see "test" displayed, you need:
> >
> > <html><head><title>title</title></head><body>test</body></html>
> 
> That is completely wrong.

Not so.

> If it was an non-XML based HTML (that is it was HTML, but not XHTML)
> and it had a DTD which included:
> 
> <!ELEMENT TITLE O O (#PCDATA) -(%head.misc;) -- document title -->
> <!ELEMENT BODY - - (%block;|SCRIPT)+ +(INS|DEL) -- document body -->
> 
> then the first example would be perfectly valid, 

You have completely missed the point of the HTML example. The point
was NOT about how to turn invalid HTML into valid HTML.

The point was that HTML error can still be detected even when there is
no reference to a published HTML version.

[...]
> 
> > > > Mind you, web browsers do not require web pages with DTD
> > > > declaration.  Unless Word acted up, Internet Explorer,
> > > > Netscape Navigator, and Opera have no problem with the
> > > > Word-produced HTML.
> > >
> > > Not strictly true.
> >
> > "True" versus "strictly true" is a game of semantic.
> >
> > The fact is that web browsers do not require web pages with DTD.
> 
> No, the fact is that interactive UAs are required to make best
> attempts at rendering incorrect HTML.

Just because a web page does not have DTD, the HTML is incorrect?
You are confusing DTD with HTML.

Boniface