[whatwg] HTML as a text format: Should <title> be optional?

Fri Apr 17 18:10:36 PDT 2009

If you use HTML as a text file format you can still let the receiving
parser infer all sorts of tags and allow yourself to write things like
Andersen's first HTML version. If you want a title, put a title
element in. Is the concern about validation? Can one really get in
that much trouble without a pedantic validator checking your work?
Could the validator's warning about missing doctype be taken as
advisory? Is the doctype a problem? It only affects the details of
rendering (by turning off quirks) and HTML5 is still not equivalent to
pagemaker anyway, especially without CSS.

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Randy Drielinger <Randy at prowebdesign.nl> wrote:
> If you're converting from a textfile, title could refer to the filename.
>
> If it's an automated process, it can be added by default.
>
> If it's manual, they'll have to remember the short html5 doctype and the title element.
>
>
> Personally I don't see any reason to make title optional.
>
> ----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
> Van: Øistein E. Andersen <liszt at coq.no>
> Verzonden: vrijdag 17 april 2009 21:49
> Aan: whatwg at whatwg.org
> Onderwerp: [whatwg] HTML as a text format: Should <title> be optional?
>
> HTML can be used as an advanced text format, and people may want to
> convert existing plain text to HTML.  For example's sake, consider the
> following:
>
>> A Short Document
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> This is a short plain-text document which someone
>> might want to convert into HTML.
>>
>> As faithful readers of this list will recall,
>> /Règles typographiques/ requires note names to be
>> typeset in italics (/ut/, /ré/, /mi/, etc.),
>> which is not possible in plain text.
>
> This corresponds to the following HTML:
>
>> <h1>A Short Document</h1>
>>
>> <p>This is a short plain-text document which someone
>> might want to convert into HTML.
>>
>> <p>As faithful readers of this list will recall,
>> <i>Règles typographiques</i> requires note names to be
>> typeset in italics (<i>ut</i>, <i>ré</i>, <i>mi</i>, etc.),
>> which is not possible in plain text.
>
> Unfortunately, this is not valid; the following two lines must be
> added to the top:
>
>> <!DOCTYPE html>
>> <title>A Short Document</title>
>
> The DOCTYPE is unfortunate, but seems impossible to get rid of at this
> point.
>
> A <title> is usually a good idea, but is it really necessary to
> require this for conformance?  After all, a <title> is not something
> which an author is likely to forget, and leaving it out has no
> unexpected consequences.
>
> --
> Øistein E. Andersen
>