Re: More syntax details in HTML 2.0?

Peter Flynn (pflynn@curia.ucc.ie)
Sun, 18 Jun 95 21:26:53 EDT

Joe English writes:

> This looks like a prima facie case for <link rev="dtd" href="...">

That won't work -- an SGML parser can't resolve the <LINK>
until it parses the <HEAD>, which it can't do until it
has the DTD.

True. But in reality, a UA (which we can assume for the moment has a
limited parsing ability built in, based on HTML 2.0) can identify the
DTD this way and simply go back 2-3 lines and re-run if a kosher DTD
ref is found :-)

One approach is to use a URI for the DTD's system identifier:

<!DOCTYPE HTML SYSTEM "http://www.w3.org/pubtext/html-4.dtd">

It's better to use a PUBLIC identifier, but there is (so far)
no way to automatically resolve them.

I thought the whole point of a PUBLIC indentifier was that there _was_
a way to resolve them: there has been discussion of this in c.t.s,
sgml-l, tei-l etc on and off for some time, and I thought someone
(Eliot Kimber?) posted examples of what directories/folders were
"expected" by the default configurations of common parser software (ie
how the PUBLIC identifier string mapped to directories given certain
conventions or defaults).

///Peter