Re: Some Comments on the RFCs

Casey Palowitch (cjp@acid.library.pitt.edu)
Thu, 16 Feb 95 09:53:17 -0500


The anonymous contributor to Rohit's mailbox asked:

! What is ".html3"? I haven't seen any reference to that before.
! Is a special extension needed for HTML 3.0 compliant documents?
!

Rohit amplified:

Good point. Does anyone out there know for sure how future
deployment of html3 source will go out on the net? For now it's
text/x-html-3 or something like that; will there be an <HTML3> tag?
My concern is whether there should be some tag attached to a file
that's visible to a user (like a clear .html3 extension).

I confabulate:

Dave Raggett's HTML3 design documents (start document is:
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/HTMLPlus/htmlplus_1.html
this point covered in
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/HTMLPlus/htmlplus_47.html)
specify a document declaration, which is the first element in an
HTML file, having the form:

<!DOCTYPE htmlplus PUBLIC "-//Internet/RFC xxxx//EN" >

he adds in a footnote that:

"The official identifier [htmlplus or perhaps html3 --cjp] will be
defined when HTML+ reaches the status of an official standard"

The syntax of this HTML3 document declaration, it should be noted,
is very closely conformant to the SGML doctype declaration. The
SGML doctype declaration and its syntax is covered more fully in
clause 11 of the SGML standard, ISO 8879.

Regards,

*+* Casey Palowitch, Electronic Text Librarian
+*+ University of Pittsburgh Library Systems
+*+ cjp+@pitt.edu NeXTmail: cjp@acid.library.pitt.edu
*+* Web: http://www.pitt.edu/~cjp/