HTML 2.0 spec and the META element

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Date: Thu, 9 Jun 1994 10:10:03 +0200
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From: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@simplon.ICS.UCI.EDU>
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Subject: HTML 2.0 spec and the META element
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> The first release of the HTML 2.0 specification materials is hereby
> announced.

I'll start with a simple comment -- the following is wrong in
<http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly/html-spec/Tags.html>:

     Obsolete head elements

     META 
        A wrapper for an HTTP element 


META cannot be an obsolete element because it has never existed in past
versions of HTML.

META should be a proposed element, with syntax and semantics fully
defined in the spec as per our prior discussion on www-html.
[I'm not surprised that it has not yet been included, I'm just making the
claim that it should be included as a proposed element before the 2.0 spec
can be considered complete].

Furthermore, all proposed elements should be fully defined in the spec
if their definition is known, and a "Proposed extensions to the DTD"
section should be included as well.  If the definition is not known,
the purpose of the element should just be considered a "future direction"
and lumped together with other undefined stuff in some descriptive appendix.
[My editorial comment for the day]


...Roy Fielding   ICS Grad Student, University of California, Irvine  USA
                   (fielding@ics.uci.edu)
    <A HREF="http://www.ics.uci.edu/dir/grad/Software/fielding">About Roy</A>