I really don't understand the argument that there is no recourse
to the SGML standard. That suggests to me that we have to include
the whole text of that standard here (which would be a violation of
copyright ...). However,
| ...
| The syntax must be conformant SGML, yes. However, there is no requirement
| whatsoever that HTML also support the million other features found in SGML.
| HTML 2.0 is explicitly limited to the features defined in the draft spec.
Some things you can't pick and choose about. However,
| ...
| > we specifically dealt with character set issues by deciding that
| > we wouldn't, for 2.0, and that we'd limit ourselves to 8859-1.
| > None of this equivocation is necessary.
| A large number of objections were made to that decision, quite vociferously
| in some cases, and no satisfactory answer was given as to why 2.0 could
| not accommodate more than just ISO-8859-1. I found a way to do this
| in the specification while at the same time maintaining (what I thought was)
| conformance to SGML.
|
| The only place where this is not the case is in the treatment of &#NNN;
| references, and that was due to a mistake on my part -- I did not know that
| they were defined by the SGML standard to always refer to the declared
| baseset, and thus mistook their purpose in the spec. That needs to be fixed,
| and I think Francois' suggestion is sufficient.
Yes. Dan, does that satisfy you, or do you have another slant on things?
-- Terry Allen (terry@ora.com) O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Editor, Digital Media Group 101 Morris St. Sebastopol, Calif., 95472 occasional column at: http://gnn.com/meta/imedia/webworks/allen/A Davenport Group sponsor. For information on the Davenport Group see ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/davenport/README.html or http://www.ora.com/davenport/README.html