HTML and SGML

This section describes the relationship between HTML and SGML, and guides the newcomer through interpretation of the DTD . (This is not a full tutorial on SGML, and in the event of any apparent conflict, the SGML standard is definitive.)

The HyperText Markup Language is an application conforming to International Standard ISO 8879 -- Standard Generalized Markup Language [ SGML ]. SGML is a system for defining structured document types, and markup languages to represent instances of those document types.

Every SGML document has three parts:

We use the term HTML to mean both the document type and the markup language for representing instances of that document type.

The SGML declaration for HTML is given in the appendix ``SGML Delcaration for HTML.'' It is implicit among WWW implementations.

The prologue for an HTML document should look like:

      <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3 Organization//DTD W3 HTML 2.0//EN">

NOTE 2:
Many extant HTML documents do not contain a prologue. Implementations are encouraged to infer the above prologue if the document does not begin with <! .
.