Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 11/17/11 11:48

dingbat@codesmiths.com <dingbat@codesmiths.com> scripsit:

> Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>
>> That does not make a document type declaration tell them anything.
>
> Ah, so it's "tell" you have the problem with

I don't think _I_ have a problem here. You seem to like to play with words.
This reminds me of some discussions concerning the concept "sex".

> So let's try another draft
>
> "The document type declaration (*) is used by the the web browser
> to
> identify what type of document it will treat it as, and what set of
> rules
> to use when displaying the web page."

I'm not particularly interested in euphemistic descriptions of doctype
sniffing. It's kludgery, it's not based on anything "telling" browsers
something, it's not identification, it's not about any rules (except in the
sense "whatever a browser does" - it's after all a program, i.e. an
algorithmic monster).

> I have to say though, although your comments have (as always) been
> entirely accurate, you could have been a little more helpful by simply
> giving an example of what you considered correct, rather than just
> griping about what was wrong.

I think I mentioned early in this thread that the topic has been discussed
before, and the OP could find answers in the archives. We've now gone
through some rounds and we are almost reaching the point where some previous
discussions have _started_. As usual, the thread will of course die rather
soon. Hence the recommendation to check past discussions rather than opening
an issue once again.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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