Perhaps in HTML there is such
a thing as an implicit (tagless) element?
I think you nailed it.
My recollection of SGML is that this element's tags
(<!ELEMENT HEAD O O) are ommisible, not that the
element is optional. The element is still there.
--- Mike Brown <mike(_at_)skew(_dot_)org> wrote:
Passin, Tom wrote:
From the DTD in the HTML 4.01 Rec -
<!ELEMENT HEAD O O (%head.content;) +(%head.misc;)
-- document head -->
<!ELEMENT TITLE - - (#PCDATA) -(%head.misc;) --
document title -->
<!ELEMENT HTML O O (%html.content;) -- document
root element -->
<!ELEMENT BODY O O (%block;|SCRIPT)+ +(INS|DEL) --
document body -->
Very clear, right? Those tags are optional.
Aren't you glad you don't
have to design the parser?
Heh. OK, I was wrong.
However, the prose in section 7.1 says
An HTML 4 document is composed of three parts:
1. a line containing HTML version information,
2. a declarative header section (delimited by the
HEAD element),
3. a body, which contains the document's actual
content. The body may be
implemented by the BODY element or the FRAMESET
element.
White space (spaces, newlines, tabs, and comments)
may appear before or
after each section. Sections 2 and 3 should be
delimited by the HTML
element.
I see we're back in the should/may/must discussion,
but at the very least
it sounds like HEAD is not optional, based on that
prose, and it sounds like
one of either BODY or FRAMESET are required.
Of course, a bit further down, it says that that
head tags are not required.
Perhaps in HTML there is such a thing as an implicit
(tagless) element? :)
Anyway...
Mike
--
Mike J. Brown | http://skew.org/~mike/resume/
Denver, CO, USA | http://skew.org/xml/
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