Re: case sensitivity in tags?

Paul Grosso (paul@arbortext.com)
Tue, 9 May 95 15:08:03 EDT

> From: connolly@w3.org (Dan Connolly)
> To: Multiple recipients of list <html-wg@oclc.org>
> Subject: case sensitivity in tags?
>
> > Is there an official consensus on case sensitivity for tags,
> > attributes, and values? I see that the current(?) draft of
> > HTML 2.0 explicitly says that names are case-insensitive,
> . . .
> > but nothing seems to be said about attributes or values
>
> . . .
>
> > Is this an SGML problem?
>
> Yes.

What is the (perceived) problem? That 8879 (the SGML standard) doesn't
cover this (which isn't true) or that what it does say needs explaining?

The fact that "names" (the precise meaning of this is defined in 8879)
are case insensitive but entity names (ditto) are case sensitive is
specified by NAMECASE GENERAL YES ENTITY NO in the SGML declaration.
Just which attribute values are case sensitive/insensitive is also well
defined. I'm assuming Dan knows all this very well, so I'm figuring
I'm not understanding the problematic issue.

paul

Paul Grosso
VP Research, ArborText, Inc.
and
Chief Technical Officer, SGML Open

Email: paul@arbortext.com