Re: OT: Defending HTML4 (was: Re: Chelume - My Conlang website up.)

On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 01:05:40AM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> In proper SGML (and HTML is a particular application of SGML) saying
> "<input checked>" means the same as <input checked="checked">, so that's
> why the latter is correct XML; the first form is just a standard SGML
> abbreviation (that XML does not support) for the second.
Ah!  Lux facta est.  Thanks for the explanation.

Seen from another perspective, I suspect most HTML parsers are not really
written as SGML parsers, and that they check merely for the presence of the
attribute irrespective of its value.  Using checked="yes" (etc) would
imply that one could use checked="no" as a synonym for the attribute's
absence, which is not the case.

-Mark

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