Re: RE Machine-readable server announcements

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Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 12:48:23 --100
Message-id: <9403091140.AA04920@manuel.hpl.hp.com>
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From: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
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Subject: Re: RE Machine-readable server announcements 
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Dan writes:

> For example, there's no handy way to validate an HTML document, since
> most of them have an instance with no hint of a prologue. This is
> largely due to some bad decisions I made a year or so ago... I was
> naive enough to expect that we'd all agree on the same DTD. Not in
> this lifetime :-{

It is good practice to include the DOCTYPE element to name the DTD,
but one still needs to register the name so we all can agree on which
DTD it references.

Is there an additional means for specifying the DTD via a URL?

> HTML serves the needs of simple situations like campus-wide
> information systems pretty well. But imagine preparing a hypertext
> legal briefing: you'd want to be SURE that the document you link to
> don't change out from under you (or at least that you can tell if it
> does...).

This suggests that hypertext links should include some means of
authenticating the destination document. I will ammend the HTML+
DTD to include an attribute for a digital signature.

Many thanks for the idea.

Dave Raggett