On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 22:57:55 +0100, Chris Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Whose job is it in the W3C? (This isn't "how you transform HTML into a DOM" - it's "what doctype do you presume when it's not there?")

DOCTYPEs? DOCTYPEs have two use cases on the web as far as I know:

  1. In HTML they provide a way for the author to pick between
     "quirks mode", "almost standards mode" (in some browsers)
     and "standards mode". What these modes imply varies among
     implementations at the moment. In general they affect
     rendering. In some implementations they affect parsing
     too.

  2. In XML some "known DOCTYPEs" tell the user agent to
     support a set of "named entities".

(Note that I said "the web" above.)


If something is HTML or not depends on the media type, mostly. text/html -> HTML (except when you're fetching something like a feed). I think Ian Hickson is doing some research on this.


--
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>

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