On 7/11/11 at 9:38 PM, [email protected] (Jack Stewart) wrote:
I am attempting to modify a website designed by a third party with a
DTD of <DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//SoftQuad//DTD HoTMetaL PRO
5.0::19980907::extensions to HTML 4.0//EN" "hmpro5.dtd>
I agree with Ken. There is no reason to keep the HotMetal DTD.
It hails from ancient days when proprietary DTDs were more
common and thought to be useful (they never were; now they're counter-useful).
You might try first substituting the DTD for HTML 4.0.1
Transitional and fix the twenty errors you get with that, if
fixing 232 errors seems too challenging at the moment.
But you have a great opportunity to pull the site forward into
HTML 5 right when use of 5 is rapidly expanding. I suspect that
the document with a count of 232 errors has a smaller number of
errors repeated many times, so fixing them all might not really
be that hard.
Most of HTML 5 is the same as HTML 4.0.1, so the learning curve
for the transition to 5 is relatively gentle. Furthermore, HTML
5's newer constructs are mostly optional, so you don't have to
master them all right now. Steve's link to Dive into HTML 5 is a
good resource for the doctype question as well as most of the
rest of the transition:
<http://diveintohtml5.org/semantics.html#the-doctype>
Browser compatibility is actually less significant than it once
was. Today's somewhat contrived regime of rapid update releases
by FireFox, Chrome, etc. is mainly focused on things like
optimization, security, and embedding media (as well as just
plain marketing). The developers aren't as much trying to
compete by inventing non-standard HTML elements. Also, page
generation tools (which HotMetal was/claimed to be) that still
insert their own extensions to HTML should be avoided anyway.
Getting over the hump of switching this site to HTML 5 would be
a learning opportunity, and will also leave the site in a
condition that readily accepts further features added by you or
the next person who works on it.
- Bruce
_bruce__van_allen__santa_cruz_ca_
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