[whatwg] Using the HTML5 DOCTYPE as a new quirksmode switch

Sat Mar 10 05:43:44 PST 2007

Alexey Feldgendler wrote:

> The tutorials will just say "Use <!DOCTYPE html>".
> 

What are those of us who wish to use XML tools on our documents supposed 
to use? We will need a real DTD at some point, to declare the entities 
if nothing else. We will not be able to use <!DOCTYPE html>.

Possibly this could be two-fold. E.g there could be both

<!DOCTYPE html>

and something like

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WhatWG//DTD XHTML 5.0//EN"
         "/DTD/xhtml5.dtd">

I know some browser-centric folks here just hate DTDs and schemas of any 
kind; but we will need them, even if the browsers don't. We will create 
and use them, even if there's no normative DTD in the spec.

One thing that's struck me in working with the spec over the last few 
days is just how hard it is to follow the various content models, and 
how much simpler most of them would be to read if they were described in 
a RELAX NG schema or a DTD.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
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