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

Olav Junker Kjær olav at olav.dk
Wed Apr 6 07:41:27 PDT 2005


Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> Because, if I am understanding correctly and a validator is a form of 
> conformance checker, a validator cannot check constraints that are not 
> expressed in the DTD and require them to be interpreted by the author. 
> Therefore, validators are exempt from checking such constraints, but are 
> non-conformant for not checking them anyway, as stated in the note. 
> (well done if you are not totally confused by that, I tried to make it 
> as clear as possible :-))

I dont think that is correct.

There are three types of conformance criteria:
(1) Criteria that can be expressed in a DTD
(2) Criteria that cannot be expressed by a DTD, but can still be checked 
by a machine.
(3) Criteria that can only be checked by a human.

A conformance checker must check (1) and (2). A simple validator which 
only checks (1) is therefore not conformant.

regards



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