>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@xxxxxxxx> 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/
> 
>  XSL-List info and archive: 
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> 


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