Re: Backwards compatibility and DOCTYPE

Bert Bos wrote:
 
> The HTML5 WD states (section 1.1.1[1]) that the format is meant
> to be as much backwards-compatible as possible.

Among others <tt>, <s>, and <big> will be removed.  The statement
is marketing, e.g., for backwards-compatibility <s> is required.
Various attributes including align= and clear= are also required
for "Wilbur-browsers" and allowed in HTML 4, but not in HTML 5.

>      <!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
>      "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
 
> But that line is not allowed in the latest draft of version 5. 
> Why not?

Because HTML 5 isn't HTML 4.  With strict you are anyway not more
compatible with legacy browsers.  What problem are you trying to
solve ?  HTML 4 strict already removed <s>, align=, clear=, etc.

Adding <tt>, <big>, etc. is no big deal if authors are determined
to create pages for "popular browsers" instead of "any browser".

HTML 5 apparently takes the approach to parse &#x80; up to &#x9F;
(or &#128; up to &#159;) as Windows-1252 0x80 up to 0x9F.  HTML 5
parsers apparently do not insist on a <title>.  HTML 5 is a kind
of "GiGo", clearly defining what its garbage output will be for
almost any garbage input found in the wild.

8.1.1 claims that the "doctype" is useless, and parses anything as
"garbage input".  "HTML 5" is not HTML, SGML, XML, or XHTML, what
should it do with a real doctype, i.e. supposed to mean something,
above ignoring it as in 8.1.1 ?

 Frank

Received on Wednesday, 5 March 2008 02:40:57 UTC