There are some interesting questions lurking here.
When HTML is sent over the network, we need to standardize the
interpretation of end-of-lines.
But when HTML is stored locally, it is reasonable that it will be stored
with local end-of-line conventions, like plain text.
I'm not sure what end-of-lines mean in the context of "SGML applications",
but I know there are systems that use <CR>, or <LF>, or <CR><LF> or
out-of-band record lengths as end-of-line terminators.
It's even feasible to store HTML as EBCDIC with due care about code
mappings and use of Non-ASCII Latin-1 characters.
I think the correct treatment of non-native end-of-line sequences in local
files may depend on the local end-of-line conventions.
In particular the rule of thumb of treating <LF> as a line-break and <CR>
as a word space works well for resolving a sloppy mix of Unix end-of-line
and Internet Net-ASCII end-of-line conventions.
It doesn't make as much sense when talking about HTML stored on a system
that uses <CR> (Mac) or record counts (CMS and others) as line-breaks.
Is there a MIME or SGML "way" to distingush between local storage of files
and the canonical way they are sent over the net?
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Albert Lunde Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu