A good how-to write HTML guide (was: Re: Agenda)

Ian Graham (igraham@utirc.utoronto.ca)
Thu, 13 Jul 95 10:11:21 EDT

Forwarded message:
> X-Comment: HTML Working Group
>
> On Thu, 13 Jul 1995, Peter K. Sheerin wrote:
>
> > And it is imperative that someone create an accurate, useful document
> > (online, published book, whatever) that consisely details how to write
> > correct HTML, according to the final standard. The wide variety of editors
> > that don't quite follow the standard needleslly complicates understanding
> > of the correct syntax, and we need to counter that.

I like to think that my own book is *correct*, and certainly expect the
same of Peter Flynn's (although I haven't bought it yet), and *some* of the
others aren't as bad as the garish covers would imply. At the same time,
I too feel that the HTML specification documents should be a bit more
prescriptive in terms of implementation features such as <b><i>... </i></b>
etc, or simply in terms of good design (having HEAD and BODY element tags,
and so on).

As for on-line documents, I have tried to make my own

(http://www.utirc.utoronto.ca/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/intro.html

as accurate as possible -- I will fix any mistakes that are pointed out to
me.

> Yeah, some of the 'experts' write books that seem to show to users that
> <p> is a hard carriage return and not a container of the paragraph
> text.

Like the NCSA html primer, that seems to be everyone's first reference, and
that is full of out of date information like this.

> Dave Morris