Re: New draft: charset, conformance cleanup

Jon_Bosak@Novell.COM
Mon, 3 Apr 95 22:15:38 EDT

[Dan Connolly:]

> > > 2. HTML as an Application of SGML
> > > If this specification and the SGML standard conflict,
> > > the SGML standard is definitive.
> >
> > As I've said, this statement is not appropriate.
>
> So stricken. Just so we all understand: HTML is a SGML application,
> and we're not in conflict with ISO8879, to the best of our knowledge.
>
> > If you want to say something like this, the most you can say is:
> >
> > If the description of SGML presented in this specification conflicts
> > with the SGML standard as represented by ISO 8879:1986 [12], then
> > the SGML standard is definitive.
>
> I'd be willing to put this in, if anybody wants it there.

It is not sufficient to say in a message separate from the draft that
"we all understand" something. The HTML specification itself must
explicitly state that HTML is an application of ISO 8879 and is to be
interpreted according to that standard.

If we keep the first two paragraphs under "2. HTML as an Application
of SGML", then I can accept Roy's amended version of the third
paragraph if the words "description" and "presented" are replaced with
"interpretation" and "used". Then the passage would read as follows
(pasting from Roy's message -- I haven't checked this against the
draft):

| 2. HTML as an Application of SGML
|
| HTML is an application of ISO Standard 8879:1986 -- Standard
| Generalized Markup Language (SGML) [12]. SGML is a system for
| defining structured document types and markup languages to
| represent instances of those document types. The SGML declaration
| for HTML and the HTML document type definitions (DTDs) are provided
| in Section 12.
|
| The term "HTML" refers to both the document type defined here and
| the markup language for representing instances of this document
| type.
|
| If the interpretation of SGML used in this specification conflicts
| with the SGML standard as represented by ISO 8879:1986 [12], then
| the SGML standard is definitive.

Jon

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