[whatwg] [html5] tags, elements and generated DOM

[Jim Ley]

On Apr 7, 2005 12:04 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Apr 2005, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> > You should know the purpose I guess. (Standards mode.) I agree that it
> > should be documentated.
> 
> Actually come to think of it there is also a second purpose, namely,
> telling conformance checkers what version of the specification to check
> against. (Which I guess is basically the original purpose of the DOCTYPE.)

Would a version parameter not be more appropriate, simpler, less
confusing to users, easier to parse, easier to understand, doesn't
confuse users into thinking that it's really an application of SGML. 
Doesn't cause problems for legacy user agents like the HTML Validator
etc. etc.

It seems a very poor and odd choice for versioning a document.

Jim.