>Is it possible to correct the specification of comment declarations
>in 2.0 so that it matches ISO 8879?
Would you care to give it a whirl?
OK.
****** CURRENT TEXT ******
| 2.2.5. Comments
|
| To include comments in an HTML document that will be
| eliminated in the mapping to terminals, surround them with
| `<!--' and `-->'. After the comment delimiter, all text up
| to the next occurrence of `-->' is ignored. Hence comments
| cannot be nested. White space is allowed between the closing
| `--' and `>', but not between the opening `<!' and `--'.
|
| For example:
|
| <HEAD>
| <TITLE>HTML Guide: Recommended Usage</TITLE>
| <!-- $Id: html-sgml.sgm,v 1.4 1995/05/06 01:44:46 connolly Exp $ -->
| </HEAD>
|
| NOTE - Some historical HTML implementations incorrectly
| consider any `>' character to be the termination of a
| comment.
****** REVISED TEXT ******
2.2.5. Comments
An HTML document may contain comments whose contents shall be ignored
by user agents. Comments may occur in two forms: as simple comments,
and as comment declarations.
2.2.5.1. Simple Comments
A simple comment is delimited on either side by '--'. Simple comments
do not nest. Simple comments may only occur within markup and may appear
wherever a parameter separator would occur.
For example:
<!DOCTYPE HTML
-- Use Experimental DTD --
PUBLIC "-//MYORG//DTD MY EXPERIMENTAL DTD//EN"
>
A simple comment is terminated only by '--' or the end of the
entity, whichever comes first. In particular, no other delimiters
such as '>' should be recognized in a simple comment.
NOTE - a parameter separator currently appears in an HTML
document only within markup declarations, which, at the
current time, is limited to the document type declaration.
NOTE - separators occurring within descriptive markup, e.g., in
tags, may not contain simple comments.
2.2.5.2. Comment Declarations
When a comment is required in a context where other markup is not used,
a comment declaration may be used; for example, within the content of
an element.
A comment declaration is composed of a markup declaration open
delimiter '<!' followed by one or more simple comments separated
by whitespace and terminated by a markup declaration close delimiter '>'.
No whitespace may appear between the '<!' and the start of the first
simple comment; however whitespace may appear after the last simple
comment and before the closing delimiter '>'.
For example:
<!-- This comment declaration contains one simple comment -->
<!-- This comment declaration --
-- contains --
-- four simple comments --
-- and has optional whitespace after the last simple comment --
>
<! -- This comment declaration is illegal due to whitespace before
the first simple comment -->
<!-- This comment declaration doesn't terminate properly >
<P>and this seeming paragraph element should be treated as part of
the comment -- but this text will not since the preceding '--'
will terminate the ill-formed simple comment within the comment
declaration and since the text starting with "but this text..."
is not whitespace.
<!-- The following comment declaration is illegal: -->
<!----->
<!-- since it is equivalent to the following: -->
<!-- -- ->
<!-- note that the first contained simple comment is well-formed
but the second is not --
>
****** END OF TEXT ******