Doctype quickie!

#1 July 20th, 2005, 05:28 PM

Are DOCTYPE statements case sensitive?

I cant remember where, but I'm sure I read that case *does* matter...

eg.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd>

....will work [ie trigger 'Standards mode'], but...

<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.01//en"
"http://www.w3.org/tr/html4/strict.dtd>

...won't.

Cheers

Chris

#2 July 20th, 2005, 05:28 PM

"CJM" <cjmwork@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
[color=blue]
>Are DOCTYPE statements case sensitive?[/color]

Parts of them are...

The root element (i.e. the HTML) is case senstive in so far as the
root element itself might be case sensitive. i.e. in XHTML the root
element must be html because all element names in XHTML are lower
case; but in HTML it makes no difference.

The Formal Public Identifier (the part in quotes) is also case
sensitive.

If you include the URL then that's as case sensitive or insensitive as
any other URL.

As far as I'm aware the rest is not case sensitive.
[color=blue]
>I cant remember where, but I'm sure I read that case *does* matter...
>
>eg.
><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
>"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd>
>
>...will work [ie trigger 'Standards mode'], but...
>
><!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.01//en"
>"http://www.w3.org/tr/html4/strict.dtd>
>
>..won't.[/color]

That second one is wrong as the FPI should be uppercase as in the
first example.

Doctype sniffing is another matter as their we're dealing with
browsers and their peculiarities rather than SGML/XML rules.

Steve

--
"My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you,
I never answer letters and you don't like my tie." - The Doctor

Steve Pugh <steve@pugh.net> <http://steve.pugh.net/>

#3 July 20th, 2005, 05:28 PM

"CJM" <cjmwork@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Are DOCTYPE statements case sensitive?[/color]

The part that is in quotation marks is case sensitive. The rest isn't.
[color=blue]
> I cant remember where, but I'm sure I read that case *does* matter...[/color]

Well, I'm afraid the HTML specification doesn't tell you this, and various
tutorials are even less informative. In principle, you are supposed to know
this from SGML.
[color=blue]
> eg.
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
> "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd>[/color]

There's a missing quotation mark near the end. Otherwise, the incantation is
correct.
[color=blue]
> ...will work [ie trigger 'Standards mode'], but...[/color]

Umm... will be mishandled by browsers, which abuse it and make (wrong)
guesses on author's intentions, completely missing the point of document
type definitions.

If they take SGML seriously, they do that just by accident, so what is
_right_ by international standards is of little consequence here. But
apparently wowsers accidentally treat the quoted strings as case sensitive -
probably just because it's a little easier, or because nobody gave the issue
a thought.
[color=blue]
> <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.01//en"
> "http://www.w3.org/tr/html4/strict.dtd>
>
> ..won't.[/color]

It is malformed, since there is no catalogued DTD under the name
"-//w3c//dtd html 4.01//en".

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

#4 July 20th, 2005, 05:28 PM

Thanks for that...

The problem is made worse for me because I'm developing in VS.NET; it has a
hand feature, which asks you whether you want HTML tags and attributes in
Uppercase/Lowercase/As Typed - I chose Lowercase to be forward-looking to
XHTML.

Unfortunately when I cut & paste my DOCTYPEs, it renders it ALL as
lowercase...which made for a bit of head-scratching when my pages were
render in an unexpected way!

Cheers

CJM

#5 July 20th, 2005, 05:52 PM

CJM wrote:[color=blue]
> Thanks for that...
>
> The problem is made worse for me because I'm developing in VS.NET; it has a
> hand feature, which asks you whether you want HTML tags and attributes in
> Uppercase/Lowercase/As Typed - I chose Lowercase to be forward-looking to
> XHTML.[/color]

Are empty tags also rendered correctly: <br/>? Otherwise it doesn't make
much sense I think.
[color=blue]
> Unfortunately when I cut & paste my DOCTYPEs, it renders it ALL as
> lowercase...which made for a bit of head-scratching when my pages were
> render in an unexpected way![/color]

E-mail the developers of that programm. The only thing I know about it,
is that it comes from MS, but maybe there is some option to add that
doctype later?
[color=blue]
> Cheers
>
> CJM
>
>[/color]

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

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