[whatwg] HTML syntax: comments before doctype and doctype sniffing

[Ian Hickson]

On Sun, 3 Dec 2006, Spartanicus wrote:
>
> "Simon Pieters" <zcorpan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >The parsing section says that a comment before the doctype may trigger 
> >quirks mode.
> 
> I'm assuming that this comment merely documents IE's current behaviour.
> Please ignore my other comment if I'm wrong.
> 
> >Therefore I think the syntax section shouldn't allow comments 
> >before the doctype (only space characters).
> 
> There are valid reasons to kick IE into quirks mode whilst triggering
> "standards mode" in other browsers. There is existing content on the web
> that intentionally does this. Why would you want to deny an author who
> fully understands the issues from doing this?

Once browsers implement HTML5, there won't be a way to trigger quirks in 
one browser and not another. We want all HTML5 documents to trigger 
standards mode.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'