[whatwg] +/- in SGML DOCTYPE (was: Re: The truth about Nokias claims)

[Geoffrey Sneddon]

On 15 Dec 2007, at 12:52, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:

> Krzysztof Żelechowski wrote:
>> Dnia 14-12-2007, Pt o godzinie 19:47 +0100, Maik Merten pisze:
>>> Krzysztof Żelechowski schrieb:
>>>> Remember the "-" in DOCTYPE HTML?
>>> Feel free to be more specific.
>> That prefix means that HTML DOCTYPE is not issued by an officially
>> recognised standards body.  If W3C were such an organisation, we  
>> would
>> have a "+" there instead.
>
> I haven't bought the SGML specification to double-check, so feel  
> free to quote from it if it says otherwise.
>
> But from everything else I've read it simply means W3C has not  
> registered a Public Text Owner Identifier with ISO. See also:
>
> http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms535242.aspx
>
> http://www.is-thought.co.uk/book/sgml-6.htm#FPI
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/fdp-primer/sgml-primer-doctype-declaration.html
>
> http://xml.coverpages.org/gca-pubidrls.html
>
> http://xml.coverpages.org/fpiResolverFlynn.html
>
> Any old organization can register as Public Text Owners, not just  
> officially recognized standards body.
>
> The - has nothing to do to do with W3C being (or not being)  
> recognized as a standards body.


ISO 8879:1989 states that SGML public text owner identifier  
registration (i.e., those that start with a + instead of the  
unregistered -) is defined in ISO 9070, which I don't have a copy of.  
I can, however, quote the summary from ISO 8879:1989: "These  
[registered owner identifiers] include standards body identifiers for  
national or industry standards organisations (similar to the ISO owner  
identifier), and unique codes that may have been assigned to  
organisations by other standards".

--
Geoffrey Sneddon
<http://gsnedders.com/>