> It may be undesired but it wouldn't break my heuristic. I don't
> really care too much about what is desired here. What I care about
> is whether the HTML spec is clear enough that the resulting behavior
> is predictable. Right now I don't believe it is (since it doesn't
> state whether or not illegal mixed content in HEAD should be ignored
> or should imply start of BODY). My heuristic aimed to achieve a
> predictable result and I believe it does.
Hmm... yes, and it describes what most browsers currently do.
I see your point.
There are two questions here; the first one (that Eric Bina
asked) is "how should a browser cope with future HEAD elements",
and the second is "what should the 2.0 spec *say* about how
a browser should cope with future HEAD elements". (Those are
two different questions, since the 2.0 spec describes current
practice circa June 1994, but nobody today wants to write a browser
that's a year out of date.)
I believe that "ignore content in the HEAD" is the right answer
to the first question. Your suggestion might be the right answer
to the second question, but since the two heuristics are mutually
incompatible I think it's best to leave the 2.0 spec as it is,
even though it's ambiguous. I don't see the ambiguity as a problem,
since it only applies to documents that are not legal HTML 2.0.
It just means that <STYLE> and similar constructs are not 2.0-compatible
extensions, and that would be true whether or not the "unknown elements
imply </HEAD><BODY>" rule were in the spec or not.
--Joe English
joe@art.com