Network Working Group T. Berners-Lee
Request for Comments: 1866 MIT/W3C
Category: Standards Track D. Connolly
November 1995
Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used
to create hypertext documents that are platform independent. HTML
documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are
appropriate for representing information from a wide range of
domains. HTML markup can represent hypertext news, mail,
documentation, and hypermedia; menus of options; database query
results; simple structured documents with in-lined graphics; and
hypertext views of existing bodies of information.
HTML has been in use by the World Wide Web (WWW) global information
initiative since 1990. This specification roughly corresponds to the
capabilities of HTML in common use prior to June 1994. HTML is an
application of ISO Standard 8879:1986 Information Processing Text and
Office Systems; Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).
The "text/html" Internet Media Type (RFC 1590) and MIME Content Type
(RFC 1521) is defined by this specification.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ........................................... 21.1 Scope .................................................. 31.2 Conformance ............................................ 32. Terms .................................................. 63. HTML as an Application of SGML .........................103.1 SGML Documents .........................................103.2 HTML Lexical Syntax ................................... 123.3 HTML Public Text Identifiers .......................... 173.4 Example HTML Document ................................. 174. HTML as an Internet Media Type ........................ 18
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4.1 text/html media type .................................. 184.2 HTML Document Representation .......................... 195. Document Structure .................................... 205.1 Document Element: HTML ................................ 215.2 Head: HEAD ............................................ 215.3 Body: BODY ............................................ 245.4 Headings: H1 ... H6 ................................... 245.5 Block Structuring Elements ............................ 255.6 List Elements ......................................... 285.7 Phrase Markup ......................................... 305.8 Line Break: BR ........................................ 345.9 Horizontal Rule: HR ................................... 345.10 Image: IMG ............................................ 346. Characters, Words, and Paragraphs ..................... 356.1 The HTML Document Character Set ....................... 367. Hyperlinks ............................................ 367.1 Accessing Resources ................................... 377.2 Activation of Hyperlinks .............................. 387.3 Simultaneous Presentation of Image Resources .......... 387.4 Fragment Identifiers .................................. 387.5 Queries and Indexes ................................... 397.6 Image Maps ............................................ 398. Forms ................................................. 408.1 Form Elements ......................................... 408.2 Form Submission ....................................... 459. HTML Public Text ...................................... 499.1 HTML DTD .............................................. 499.2 Strict HTML DTD ....................................... 619.3 Level 1 HTML DTD ...................................... 629.4 Strict Level 1 HTML DTD ............................... 639.5 SGML Declaration for HTML ............................. 649.6 Sample SGML Open Entity Catalog for HTML .............. 659.7 Character Entity Sets ................................. 6610. Security Considerations ............................... 6911. References ............................................ 6912. Acknowledgments ....................................... 7112.1 Authors' Addresses .................................... 7113. The HTML Coded Character Set .......................... 7214. Proposed Entities ..................................... 75
The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a simple data format used to
create hypertext documents that are portable from one platform to
another. HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics
that are appropriate for representing information from a wide range
of domains.
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As HTML is an application of SGML, this specification assumes a
working knowledge of [SGML].
HTML has been in use by the World-Wide Web (WWW) global information
initiative since 1990. Previously, informal documentation on HTML has
been available from a number of sources on the Internet. This
specification brings together, clarifies, and formalizes a set of
features that roughly corresponds to the capabilities of HTML in
common use prior to June 1994. A number of new features to HTML are
being proposed and experimented in the Internet community.
This document thus defines a HTML 2.0 (to distinguish it from the
previous informal specifications). Future (generally upwardly
compatible) versions of HTML with new features will be released with
higher version numbers.
HTML is an application of ISO Standard 8879:1986, "Information
Processing Text and Office Systems; Standard Generalized Markup
Language" (SGML). The HTML Document Type Definition (DTD) is a formal
definition of the HTML syntax in terms of SGML.
This specification also defines HTML as an Internet Media
Type[IMEDIA] and MIME Content Type[MIME] called `text/html'. As such,
it defines the semantics of the HTML syntax and how that syntax
should be interpreted by user agents.
A document is a conforming HTML document if:
* It is a conforming SGML document, and it conforms to the
HTML DTD (see 9.1, "HTML DTD").
NOTE - There are a number of syntactic idioms that
are not supported or are supported inconsistently in
some historical user agent implementations. These
idioms are identified in notes like this throughout
this specification.
* It conforms to the application conventions in this
specification. For example, the value of the HREF attribute
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of the <A> element must conform to the URI syntax.
* Its document character set includes [ISO-8859-1] and
agrees with [ISO-10646]; that is, each code position listed
in 13, "The HTML Coded Character Set" is included, and each
code position in the document character set is mapped to the
same character as [ISO-10646] designates for that code
position.
NOTE - The document character set is somewhat
independent of the character encoding scheme used to
represent a document. For example, the `ISO-2022-JP'
character encoding scheme can be used for HTML
documents, since its repertoire is a subset of the
[ISO-10646] repertoire. The critical distinction is
that numeric character references agree with
[ISO-10646] regardless of how the document is
encoded.
The HTML DTD defines a standard HTML document type and several
variations, by way of feature test entities. Feature test entities
are declarations in the HTML DTD that control the inclusion or
exclusion of portions of the DTD.
HTML.Recommended
Certain features of the language are necessary for
compatibility with widespread usage, but they may
compromise the structural integrity of a document. This
feature test entity selects a more prescriptive document
type definition that eliminates those features. It is
set to `IGNORE' by default.
For example, in order to preserve the structure of a
document, an editing user agent may translate HTML
documents to the recommended subset, or it may require
that the documents be in the recommended subset for
import.
HTML.Deprecated
Certain features of the language are necessary for
compatibility with earlier versions of the
specification, but they tend to be used and implemented
inconsistently, and their use is deprecated. This
feature test entity enables a document type definition
that allows these features. It is set to `INCLUDE' by
default.
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Documents generated by translation software or editing
software should not contain deprecated idioms.
An HTML user agent conforms to this specification if:
* It parses the characters of an HTML document into data
characters and markup according to [SGML].
NOTE - In the interest of robustness and
extensibility, there are a number of widely deployed
conventions for handling non-conforming documents.
See 4.2.1, "Undeclared Markup Error Handling" for
details.
* It supports the `ISO-8859-1' character encoding scheme and
processes each character in the ISO Latin Alphabet No. 1 as
specified in 6.1, "The HTML Document Character Set".
NOTE - To support non-western writing systems, HTML
user agents are encouraged to support
`ISO-10646-UCS-2' or similar character encoding
schemes and as much of the character repertoire of
[ISO-10646] as is practical.
* It behaves identically for documents whose parsed token
sequences are identical.
For example, comments and the whitespace in tags disappear
during tokenization, and hence they do not influence the
behavior of conforming user agents.
* It allows the user to traverse (or at least attempt to
traverse, resources permitting) all hyperlinks from <A>
elements in an HTML document.
An HTML user agent is a level 2 user agent if, additionally:
* It allows the user to express all form field values
specified in an HTML document and to (attempt to) submit the
values as requests to information services.
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absolute URI
a URI in absolute form; for example, as per [URL]
anchor
one of two ends of a hyperlink; typically, a phrase
marked as an <A> element.
base URI
an absolute URI used in combination with a relative URI
to determine another absolute URI.
character
An atom of information, for example a letter or a digit.
Graphic characters have associated glyphs, whereas
control characters have associated processing semantics.
character encoding
scheme
A function whose domain is the set of sequences of
octets, and whose range is the set of sequences of
characters from a character repertoire; that is, a
sequence of octets and a character encoding scheme
determines a sequence of characters.
character repertoire
A finite set of characters; e.g. the range of a coded
character set.
code position
An integer. A coded character set and a code position
from its domain determine a character.
coded character set
A function whose domain is a subset of the integers and
whose range is a character repertoire. That is, for some
set of integers (usually of the form {0, 1, 2, ..., N}
), a coded character set and an integer in that set
determine a character. Conversely, a character and a
coded character set determine the character's code
position (or, in rare cases, a few code positions).
conforming HTML user
agent
A user agent that conforms to this specification in its
processing of the Internet Media Type `text/html'.
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data character
Characters other than markup, which make up the content
of elements.
document character set
a coded character set whose range includes all
characters used in a document. Every SGML document has
exactly one document character set. Numeric character
references are resolved via the document character set.
DTD
document type definition. Rules that apply SGML to the
markup of documents of a particular type, including a
set of element and entity declarations. [SGML]
element
A component of the hierarchical structure defined by a
document type definition; it is identified in a document
instance by descriptive markup, usually a start-tag and
end-tag. [SGML]
end-tag
Descriptive markup that identifies the end of an
element. [SGML]
entity
data with an associated notation or interpretation; for
example, a sequence of octets associated with an
Internet Media Type. [SGML]
fragment identifier
the portion of an HREF attribute value following the `#'
character which modifies the presentation of the
destination of a hyperlink.
form data set
a sequence of name/value pairs; the names are given by
an HTML document and the values are given by a user.
HTML document
An SGML document conforming to this document type
definition.
hyperlink
a relationship between two anchors, called the head and
the tail. The link goes from the tail to the head. The
head and tail are also known as destination and source,
respectively.
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markup
Syntactically delimited characters added to the data of
a document to represent its structure. There are four
different kinds of markup: descriptive markup (tags),
references, markup declarations, and processing
instructions. [SGML]
may
A document or user interface is conforming whether this
statement applies or not.
media type
an Internet Media Type, as per [IMEDIA].
message entity
a head and body. The head is a collection of name/value
fields, and the body is a sequence of octets. The head
defines the content type and content transfer encoding
of the body. [MIME]
minimally conforming
HTML user agent
A user agent that conforms to this specification except
for form processing. It may only process level 1 HTML
documents.
must
Documents or user agents in conflict with this statement
are not conforming.
numeric character
reference
markup that refers to a character by its code position
in the document character set.
SGML document
A sequence of characters organized physically as a set
of entities and logically into a hierarchy of elements.
An SGML document consists of data characters and markup;
the markup describes the structure of the information
and an instance of that structure. [SGML]
shall
If a document or user agent conflicts with this
statement, it does not conform to this specification.
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should
If a document or user agent conflicts with this
statement, undesirable results may occur in practice
even though it conforms to this specification.
start-tag
Descriptive markup that identifies the start of an
element and specifies its generic identifier and
attributes. [SGML]
syntax-reference
character set
A coded character set whose range includes all
characters used for markup; e.g. name characters and
delimiter characters.
tag
Markup that delimits an element. A tag includes a name
which refers to an element declaration in the DTD, and
may include attributes. [SGML]
text entity
A finite sequence of characters. A text entity typically
takes the form of a sequence of octets with some
associated character encoding scheme, transmitted over
the network or stored in a file. [SGML]
typical
Typical processing is described for many elements. This
is not a mandatory part of the specification but is
given as guidance for designers and to help explain the
uses for which the elements were intended.
URI
A Uniform Resource Identifier is a formatted string that
serves as an identifier for a resource, typically on the
Internet. URIs are used in HTML to identify the anchors
of hyperlinks. URIs in common practice include Uniform
Resource Locators (URLs)[URL] and Relative URLs
[RELURL].
user agent
A component of a distributed system that presents an
interface and processes requests on behalf of a user;
for example, a www browser or a mail user agent.
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WWW
The World-Wide Web is a hypertext-based, distributed
information system created by researchers at CERN in
Switzerland. <URL:http://www.w3.org/>
HTML is an application of ISO 8879:1986 -- Standard Generalized
Markup Language (SGML). SGML is a system for defining structured
document types and markup languages to represent instances of those
document types[SGML]. The public text -- DTD and SGML declaration --
of the HTML document type definition are provided in 9, "HTML Public
Text".
The term "HTML" refers to both the document type defined here and the
markup language for representing instances of this document type.
An HTML document is an SGML document; that is, a sequence of
characters organized physically into a set of entities, and logically
as a hierarchy of elements.
In the SGML specification, the first production of the SGML syntax
grammar separates an SGML document into three parts: an SGML
declaration, a prologue, and an instance. For the purposes of this
specification, the prologue is a DTD. This DTD describes another
grammar: the start symbol is given in the doctype declaration, the
terminals are data characters and tags, and the productions are
determined by the element declarations. The instance must conform to
the DTD, that is, it must be in the language defined by this grammar.
The SGML declaration determines the lexicon of the grammar. It
specifies the document character set, which determines a character
repertoire that contains all characters that occur in all text
entities in the document, and the code positions associated with
those characters.
The SGML declaration also specifies the syntax-reference character
set of the document, and a few other parameters that bind the
abstract syntax of SGML to a concrete syntax. This concrete syntax
determines how the sequence of characters of the document is mapped
to a sequence of terminals in the grammar of the prologue.
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For example, consider the following document:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<title>Parsing Example</title>
<p>Some text. <em>*wow*</em></p>
An HTML user agent should use the SGML declaration that is given in
9.5, "SGML Declaration for HTML". According to its document character
set, `*' refers to an asterisk character, `*'.
The instance above is regarded as the following sequence of
terminals:
1. start-tag: TITLE
2. data characters: "Parsing Example"
3. end-tag: TITLE
4. start-tag: P
5. data characters "Some text."
6. start-tag: EM
7. data characters: "*wow*"
8. end-tag: EM
9. end-tag: P
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The start symbol of the DTD grammar is HTML, and the productions are
given in the public text identified by `-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN'
(9.1, "HTML DTD"). The terminals above parse as:
HTML
|
\-HEAD
| |
| \-TITLE
| |
| \-<TITLE>
| |
| \-"Parsing Example"
| |
| \-</TITLE>
|
\-BODY
|
\-P
|
\-<P>
|
\-"Some text. "
|
\-EM
| |
| \-<EM>
| |
| \-"*wow*"
| |
| \-</EM>
|
\-</P>
Some of the elements are delimited explicitly by tags, while the
boundaries of others are inferred. The <HTML> element contains a
<HEAD> element and a <BODY> element. The <HEAD> contains <TITLE>,
which is explicitly delimited by start- and end-tags.
SGML specifies an abstract syntax and a reference concrete syntax.
Aside from certain quantities and capacities (e.g. the limit on the
length of a name), all HTML documents use the reference concrete
syntax. In particular, all markup characters are in the repertoire of
[ISO-646]. Data characters are drawn from the document character set
(see 6, "Characters, Words, and Paragraphs").
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A complete discussion of SGML parsing, e.g. the mapping of a sequence
of characters to a sequence of tags and data, is left to the SGML
standard[SGML]. This section is only a summary.
Any sequence of characters that do not constitute markup (see 9.6
"Delimiter Recognition" of [SGML]) are mapped directly to strings of
data characters. Some markup also maps to data character strings.
Numeric character references map to single-character strings, via the
document character set. Each reference to one of the general entities
defined in the HTML DTD maps to a single-character string.
For example,
abc<def => "abc","<","def"
abc<def => "abc","<","def"
The terminating semicolon on entity or numeric character references
is only necessary when the character following the reference would
otherwise be recognized as part of the name (see 9.4.5 "Reference
End" in [SGML]).
abc < def => "abc ","<"," def"
abc < def => "abc ","<"," def"
An ampersand is only recognized as markup when it is followed by a
letter or a `#' and a digit:
abc & lt def => "abc & lt def"
abc &# 60 def => "abc &# 60 def"
A useful technique for translating plain text to HTML is to replace
each '<', '&', and '>' by an entity reference or numeric character
reference as follows:
ENTITY NUMERIC
CHARACTER REFERENCE CHAR REF CHARACTER DESCRIPTION
--------- ---------- ----------- ---------------------
& & & Ampersand
< < < Less than
> > > Greater than
NOTE - There are SGML mechanisms, CDATA and RCDATA
declared content, that allow most `<', `>', and `&'
characters to be entered without the use of entity
references. Because these mechanisms tend to be used and
implemented inconsistently, and because they conflict
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with techniques for reducing HTML to 7 bit ASCII for
transport, they are deprecated in this version of HTML.
See 5.5.2.1, "Example and Listing: XMP, LISTING".
Tags delimit elements such as headings, paragraphs, lists, character
highlighting, and links. Most HTML elements are identified in a
document as a start-tag, which gives the element name and attributes,
followed by the content, followed by the end tag. Start-tags are
delimited by `<' and `>'; end tags are delimited by `</' and `>'. An
example is:
<H1>This is a Heading</H1>
Some elements only have a start-tag without an end-tag. For example,
to create a line break, use the `<BR>' tag. Additionally, the end
tags of some other elements, such as Paragraph (`</P>'), List Item
(`</LI>'), Definition Term (`</DT>'), and Definition Description
(`</DD>') elements, may be omitted.
The content of an element is a sequence of data character strings and
nested elements. Some elements, such as anchors, cannot be nested.
Anchors and character highlighting may be put inside other
constructs. See the HTML DTD, 9.1, "HTML DTD" for full details.
NOTE - The SGML declaration for HTML specifies SHORTTAG YES, which
means that there are other valid syntaxes for tags, such as NET
tags, `<EM/.../'; empty start tags, `<>'; and empty end-tags,
`</>'. Until support for these idioms is widely deployed, their
use is strongly discouraged.
A name consists of a letter followed by letters, digits, periods, or
hyphens. The length of a name is limited to 72 characters by the
`NAMELEN' parameter in the SGML declaration for HTML, 9.5, "SGML
Declaration for HTML". Element and attribute names are not case
sensitive, but entity names are. For example, `<BLOCKQUOTE>',
`<BlockQuote>', and `<blockquote>' are equivalent, whereas `&' is
different from `&'.
In a start-tag, the element name must immediately follow the tag open
delimiter `<'.
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In a start-tag, white space and attributes are allowed between the
element name and the closing delimiter. An attribute specification
typically consists of an attribute name, an equal sign, and a value,
though some attribute specifications may be just a name token. White
space is allowed around the equal sign.
The value of the attribute may be either:
* A string literal, delimited by single quotes or double
quotes and not containing any occurrences of the delimiting
character.
NOTE - Some historical implementations consider any
occurrence of the `>' character to signal the end of
a tag. For compatibility with such implementations,
when `>' appears in an attribute value, it should be
represented with a numeric character reference. For
example, `<IMG SRC="eq1.jpg" alt="a>b">' should be
written `<IMG SRC="eq1.jpg" alt="a>b">' or `<IMG
SRC="eq1.jpg" alt="a>b">'.
* A name token (a sequence of letters, digits, periods, or
hyphens). Name tokens are not case sensitive.
NOTE - Some historical implementations allow any
character except space or `>' in a name token.
In this example, <img> is the element name, src is the attribute
name, and `http://host/dir/file.gif' is the attribute value:
<img src='http://host/dir/file.gif'>
A useful technique for computing an attribute value literal for a
given string is to replace each quote and white space character by an
entity reference or numeric character reference as follows:
ENTITY NUMERIC
CHARACTER REFERENCE CHAR REF CHARACTER DESCRIPTION
--------- ---------- ----------- ---------------------
HT 	 Tab
LF Line Feed
CR Carriage Return
SP   Space
" " " Quotation mark
& & & Ampersand
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For example:
<IMG SRC="image.jpg" alt="First "real" example">
The `NAMELEN' parameter in the SGML declaration (9.5, "SGML
Declaration for HTML") limits the length of an attribute value to
1024 characters.
Attributes such as ISMAP and COMPACT may be written using a minimized
syntax (see 7.9.1.2 "Omitted Attribute Name" in [SGML]). The markup:
<UL COMPACT="compact">
can be written using a minimized syntax:
<UL COMPACT>
NOTE - Some historical implementations only understand the minimized
syntax.
To include comments in an HTML document, use a comment declaration. A
comment declaration consists of `<!' followed by zero or more
comments followed by `>'. Each comment starts with `--' and includes
all text up to and including the next occurrence of `--'. In a
comment declaration, white space is allowed after each comment, but
not before the first comment. The entire comment declaration is
ignored.
NOTE - Some historical HTML implementations incorrectly consider
any `>' character to be the termination of a comment.
For example:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HEAD>
<TITLE>HTML Comment Example</TITLE>
<!-- Id: html-sgml.sgm,v 1.5 1995/05/26 21:29:50 connolly Exp -->
<!-- another -- -- comment -->
<!>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<p> <!- not a comment, just regular old data characters ->
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To identify information as an HTML document conforming to this
specification, each document must start with one of the following
document type declarations.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
This document type declaration refers to the HTML DTD in 9.1, "HTML
DTD".
NOTE - If the body of a `text/html' message entity does not begin
with a document type declaration, an HTML user agent should infer
the above document type declaration.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Level 2//EN">
This document type declaration also refers to the HTML DTD which
appears in 9.1, "HTML DTD".
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Level 1//EN">
This document type declaration refers to the level 1 HTML DTD in 9.3,
"Level 1 HTML DTD". Form elements must not occur in level 1
documents.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Strict//EN">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Strict Level 1//EN">
These two document type declarations refer to the HTML DTD in 9.2,
"Strict HTML DTD" and 9.4, "Strict Level 1 HTML DTD". They refer to
the more structurally rigid definition of HTML.
HTML user agents may support other document types. In particular,
they may support other formal public identifiers, or other document
types altogether. They may support an internal declaration subset
with supplemental entity, element, and other markup declarations.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HTML>
<!-- Here's a good place to put a comment. -->
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Structural Example</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H1>First Header</H1>
<P>This is a paragraph in the example HTML file. Keep in mind
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that the title does not appear in the document text, but that
the header (defined by H1) does.</P>
<OL>
<LI>First item in an ordered list.
<LI>Second item in an ordered list.
<UL COMPACT>
<LI> Note that lists can be nested;
<LI> Whitespace may be used to assist in reading the
HTML source.
</UL>
<LI>Third item in an ordered list.
</OL>
<P>This is an additional paragraph. Technically, end tags are
not required for paragraphs, although they are allowed. You can
include character highlighting in a paragraph. <EM>This sentence
of the paragraph is emphasized.</EM> Note that the </P>
end tag has been omitted.
<P>
<IMG SRC ="triangle.xbm" alt="Warning: ">
Be sure to read these <b>bold instructions</b>.
</BODY></HTML>
An HTML user agent allows users to interact with resources which have
HTML representations. At a minimum, it must allow users to examine
and navigate the content of HTML level 1 documents. HTML user agents
should be able to preserve all formatting distinctions represented in
an HTML document, and be able to simultaneously present resources
referred to by IMG elements (they may ignore some formatting
distinctions or IMG resources at the request of the user). Level 2
HTML user agents should support form entry and submission.
This specification defines the Internet Media Type [IMEDIA] (formerly
referred to as the Content Type [MIME]) called `text/html'. The
following is to be registered with [IANA].
Media Type name
text
Media subtype name
html
Required parameters
none
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Optional parameters
level, charset
Encoding considerations
any encoding is allowed
Security considerations
see 10, "Security Considerations"
The optional parameters are defined as follows:
Level
The level parameter specifies the feature set used in
the document. The level is an integer number, implying
that any features of same or lower level may be present
in the document. Level 1 is all features defined in this
specification except those that require the <FORM>
element. Level 2 includes form processing. Level 2 is
the default.
Charset
The charset parameter (as defined in section 7.1.1 of
RFC 1521[MIME]) may be given to specify the character
encoding scheme used to represent the HTML document as a
sequence of octets. The default value is outside the
scope of this specification; but for example, the
default is `US-ASCII' in the context of MIME mail, and
`ISO-8859-1' in the context of HTTP [HTTP].
A message entity with a content type of `text/html' represents an
HTML document, consisting of a single text entity. The `charset'
parameter (whether implicit or explicit) identifies a character
encoding scheme. The text entity consists of the characters
determined by this character encoding scheme and the octets of the
body of the message entity.
To facilitate experimentation and interoperability between
implementations of various versions of HTML, the installed base of
HTML user agents supports a superset of the HTML 2.0 language by
reducing it to HTML 2.0: markup in the form of a start-tag or end-
tag, whose generic identifier is not declared is mapped to nothing
during tokenization. Undeclared attributes are treated similarly. The
entire attribute specification of an unknown attribute (i.e., the
unknown attribute and its value, if any) should be ignored. On the
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other hand, references to undeclared entities should be treated as
data characters.
For example:
<div class=chapter><h1>foo</h1><p>...</div>
=> <H1>,"foo",</H1>,<P>,"..."
xxx <P ID=z23> yyy
=> "xxx ",<P>," yyy
Let α & β be finite sets.
=> "Let α & β be finite sets."
Support for notifying the user of such errors is encouraged.
Information providers are warned that this convention is not binding:
unspecified behavior may result, as such markup does not conform to
this specification.
SGML specifies that a text entity is a sequence of records, each
beginning with a record start character and ending with a record end
character (code positions 10 and 13 respectively) (section 7.6.1,
"Record Boundaries" in [SGML]).
[MIME] specifies that a body of type `text/*' is a sequence of lines,
each terminated by CRLF, that is, octets 13, 10.
In practice, HTML documents are frequently represented and
transmitted using an end of line convention that depends on the
conventions of the source of the document; frequently, that
representation consists of CR only, LF only, or a CR LF sequence.
Hence the decoding of the octets will often result in a text entity
with some missing record start and record end characters.
Since there is no ambiguity, HTML user agents are encouraged to infer
the missing record start and end characters.
An HTML user agent should treat end of line in any of its variations
as a word space in all contexts except preformatted text. Within
preformatted text, an HTML user agent should treat any of the three
common representations of end-of-line as starting a new line.
An HTML document is a tree of elements, including a head and body,
headings, paragraphs, lists, etc. Form elements are discussed in 8,
"Forms".
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The HTML document element consists of a head and a body, much like a
memo or a mail message. The head contains the title and optional
elements. The body is a text flow consisting of paragraphs, lists,
and other elements.
The head of an HTML document is an unordered collection of
information about the document. For example:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Introduction to HTML</TITLE>
</HEAD>
...
Every HTML document must contain a <TITLE> element.
The title should identify the contents of the document in a global
context. A short title, such as "Introduction" may be meaningless out
of context. A title such as "Introduction to HTML Elements" is more
appropriate.
NOTE - The length of a title is not limited; however, long titles
may be truncated in some applications. To minimize this
possibility, titles should be fewer than 64 characters.
A user agent may display the title of a document in a history list or
as a label for the window displaying the document. This differs from
headings (5.4, "Headings: H1 ... H6"), which are typically displayed
within the body text flow.
The optional <BASE> element provides a base address for interpreting
relative URLs when the document is read out of context (see 7,
"Hyperlinks"). The value of the HREF attribute must be an absolute
URI.
The <ISINDEX> element indicates that the user agent should allow the
user to search an index by giving keywords. See 7.5, "Queries and
Indexes" for details.
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The <LINK> element represents a hyperlink (see 7, "Hyperlinks"). Any
number of LINK elements may occur in the <HEAD> element of an HTML
document. It has the same attributes as the <A> element (see 5.7.3,
"Anchor: A").
The <LINK> element is typically used to indicate authorship, related
indexes and glossaries, older or more recent versions, document
hierarchy, associated resources such as style sheets, etc.
The <META> element is an extensible container for use in identifying
specialized document meta-information. Meta-information has two main
functions:
* to provide a means to discover that the data set exists
and how it might be obtained or accessed; and
* to document the content, quality, and features of a data
set, indicating its fitness for use.
Each <META> element specifies a name/value pair. If multiple META
elements are provided with the same name, their combined contents--
concatenated as a comma-separated list--is the value associated with
that name.
NOTE - The <META> element should not be used where a
specific element, such as <TITLE>, would be more
appropriate. Rather than a <META> element with a URI as
the value of the CONTENT attribute, use a <LINK>
element.
HTTP servers may read the content of the document <HEAD> to generate
header fields corresponding to any elements defining a value for the
attribute HTTP-EQUIV.
NOTE - The method by which the server extracts document
meta-information is unspecified and not mandatory. The
<META> element only provides an extensible mechanism for
identifying and embedding document meta-information --
how it may be used is up to the individual server
implementation and the HTML user agent.
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Attributes of the META element:
HTTP-EQUIV
binds the element to an HTTP header field. An HTTP
server may use this information to process the document.
In particular, it may include a header field in the
responses to requests for this document: the header name
is taken from the HTTP-EQUIV attribute value, and the
header value is taken from the value of the CONTENT
attribute. HTTP header names are not case sensitive.
NAME
specifies the name of the name/value pair. If not
present, HTTP-EQUIV gives the name.
CONTENT
specifies the value of the name/value pair.
Examples
If the document contains:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires"
CONTENT="Tue, 04 Dec 1993 21:29:02 GMT">
<meta http-equiv="Keywords" CONTENT="Fred">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Reply-to"
content="fielding@ics.uci.edu (Roy Fielding)">
<Meta Http-equiv="Keywords" CONTENT="Barney">
then the server may include the following header fields:
Expires: Tue, 04 Dec 1993 21:29:02 GMT
Keywords: Fred, Barney
Reply-to: fielding@ics.uci.edu (Roy Fielding)
as part of the HTTP response to a `GET' or `HEAD' request for
that document.
An HTTP server must not use the <META> element to form an HTTP
response header unless the HTTP-EQUIV attribute is present.
An HTTP server may disregard any <META> elements that specify
information controlled by the HTTP server, for example `Server',
`Date', and `Last-modified'.
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The <NEXTID> element is included for historical reasons only. HTML
documents should not contain <NEXTID> elements.
The <NEXTID> element gives a hint for the name to use for a new <A>
element when editing an HTML document. It should be distinct from all
NAME attribute values on <A> elements. For example:
<NEXTID N=Z27>
The <BODY> element contains the text flow of the document, including
headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.
For example:
<BODY>
<h1>Important Stuff</h1>
<p>Explanation about important stuff...
</BODY>
The six heading elements, <H1> through <H6>, denote section headings.
Although the order and occurrence of headings is not constrained by
the HTML DTD, documents should not skip levels (for example, from H1
to H3), as converting such documents to other representations is
often problematic.
Example of use:
<H1>This is a heading</H1>
Here is some text
<H2>Second level heading</H2>
Here is some more text.
Typical renderings are:
H1
Bold, very-large font, centered. One or two blank lines
above and below.
H2
Bold, large font, flush-left. One or two blank lines
above and below.
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H3
Italic, large font, slightly indented from the left
margin. One or two blank lines above and below.
H4
Bold, normal font, indented more than H3. One blank line
above and below.
H5
Italic, normal font, indented as H4. One blank line
above.
H6
Bold, indented same as normal text, more than H5. One
blank line above.
Block structuring elements include paragraphs, lists, and block
quotes. They must not contain heading elements, but they may contain
phrase markup, and in some cases, they may be nested.
The <P> element indicates a paragraph. The exact indentation, leading
space, etc. of a paragraph is not specified and may be a function of
other tags, style sheets, etc.
Typically, paragraphs are surrounded by a vertical space of one line
or half a line. The first line in a paragraph is indented in some
cases.
Example of use:
<H1>This Heading Precedes the Paragraph</H1>
<P>This is the text of the first paragraph.
<P>This is the text of the second paragraph. Although you do not
need to start paragraphs on new lines, maintaining this
convention facilitates document maintenance.</P>
<P>This is the text of a third paragraph.</P>
The <PRE> element represents a character cell block of text and is
suitable for text that has been formatted for a monospaced font.
The <PRE> tag may be used with the optional WIDTH attribute. The
WIDTH attribute specifies the maximum number of characters for a line
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and allows the HTML user agent to select a suitable font and
indentation.
Within preformatted text:
* Line breaks within the text are rendered as a move to the
beginning of the next line.
NOTE - References to the "beginning of a new line"
do not imply that the renderer is forbidden from
using a constant left indent for rendering
preformatted text. The left indent may be
constrained by the width required.
* Anchor elements and phrase markup may be used.
NOTE - Constraints on the processing of <PRE>
content may limit or prevent the ability of the HTML
user agent to faithfully render phrase markup.
* Elements that define paragraph formatting (headings,
address, etc.) must not be used.
NOTE - Some historical documents contain <P> tags in
<PRE> elements. User agents are encouraged to treat
this as a line break. A <P> tag followed by a
newline character should produce only one line
break, not a line break plus a blank line.
* The horizontal tab character (code position 9 in the HTML
document character set) must be interpreted as the smallest
positive nonzero number of spaces which will leave the
number of characters so far on the line as a multiple of 8.
Documents should not contain tab characters, as they are not
supported consistently.
Example of use:
<PRE>
Line 1.
Line 2 is to the right of line 1. <a href="abc">abc</a>
Line 3 aligns with line 2. <a href="def">def</a>
</PRE>
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The <XMP> and <LISTING> elements are similar to the <PRE> element,
but they have a different syntax. Their content is declared as CDATA,
which means that no markup except the end-tag open delimiter-in-
context is recognized (see 9.6 "Delimiter Recognition" of [SGML]).
NOTE - In a previous draft of the HTML specification, the syntax
of <XMP> and <LISTING> elements allowed closing tags to be treated
as data characters, as long as the tag name was not <XMP> or
<LISTING>, respectively.
Since CDATA declared content has a number of unfortunate interactions
with processing techniques and tends to be used and implemented
inconsistently, HTML documents should not contain <XMP> nor <LISTING>
elements -- the <PRE> tag is more expressive and more consistently
supported.
The <LISTING> element should be rendered so that at least 132
characters fit on a line. The <XMP> element should be rendered so
that at least 80 characters fit on a line but is otherwise identical
to the <LISTING> element.
NOTE - In a previous draft, HTML included a <PLAINTEXT> element
that is similar to the <LISTING> element, except that there is no
closing tag: all characters after the <PLAINTEXT> start-tag are
data.
The <ADDRESS> element contains such information as address, signature
and authorship, often at the beginning or end of the body of a
document.
Typically, the <ADDRESS> element is rendered in an italic typeface
and may be indented.
Example of use:
<ADDRESS>
Newsletter editor<BR>
J.R. Brown<BR>
JimquickPost News, Jimquick, CT 01234<BR>
Tel (123) 456 7890
</ADDRESS>
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The <BLOCKQUOTE> element contains text quoted from another source.
A typical rendering might be a slight extra left and right indent,
and/or italic font. The <BLOCKQUOTE> typically provides space above
and below the quote.
Single-font rendition may reflect the quotation style of Internet
mail by putting a vertical line of graphic characters, such as the
greater than symbol (>), in the left margin.
Example of use:
I think the play ends
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>Soft you now, the fair Ophelia. Nymph, in thy orisons, be all
my sins remembered.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
but I am not sure.
HTML includes a number of list elements. They may be used in
combination; for example, a <OL> may be nested in an <LI> element of
a <UL>.
The COMPACT attribute suggests that a compact rendering be used.
The <UL> represents a list of items -- typically rendered as a
bulleted list.
The content of a <UL> element is a sequence of <LI> elements. For
example:
<UL>
<LI>First list item
<LI>Second list item
<p>second paragraph of second item
<LI>Third list item
</UL>
The <OL> element represents an ordered list of items, sorted by
sequence or order of importance. It is typically rendered as a
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numbered list.
The content of a <OL> element is a sequence of <LI> elements. For
example:
<OL>
<LI>Click the Web button to open URI window.
<LI>Enter the URI number in the text field of the Open URI
window. The Web document you specified is displayed.
<ol>
<li>substep 1
<li>substep 2
</ol>
<LI>Click highlighted text to move from one link to another.
</OL>
The <DIR> element is similar to the <UL> element. It represents a
list of short items, typically up to 20 characters each. Items in a
directory list may be arranged in columns, typically 24 characters
wide.
The content of a <DIR> element is a sequence of <LI> elements.
Nested block elements are not allowed in the content of <DIR>
elements. For example:
<DIR>
<LI>A-H<LI>I-M
<LI>M-R<LI>S-Z
</DIR>
The <MENU> element is a list of items with typically one line per
item. The menu list style is typically more compact than the style of
an unordered list.
The content of a <MENU> element is a sequence of <LI> elements.
Nested block elements are not allowed in the content of <MENU>
elements. For example:
<MENU>
<LI>First item in the list.
<LI>Second item in the list.
<LI>Third item in the list.
</MENU>
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A definition list is a list of terms and corresponding definitions.
Definition lists are typically formatted with the term flush-left and
the definition, formatted paragraph style, indented after the term.
The content of a <DL> element is a sequence of <DT> elements and/or
<DD> elements, usually in pairs. Multiple <DT> may be paired with a
single <DD> element. Documents should not contain multiple
consecutive <DD> elements.
Example of use:
<DL>
<DT>Term<DD>This is the definition of the first term.
<DT>Term<DD>This is the definition of the second term.
</DL>
If the DT term does not fit in the DT column (typically one third of
the display area), it may be extended across the page with the DD
section moved to the next line, or it may be wrapped onto successive
lines of the left hand column.
The optional COMPACT attribute suggests that a compact rendering be
used, because the list items are small and/or the entire list is
large.
Unless the COMPACT attribute is present, an HTML user agent may leave
white space between successive DT, DD pairs. The COMPACT attribute
may also reduce the width of the left-hand (DT) column.
<DL COMPACT>
<DT>Term<DD>This is the first definition in compact format.
<DT>Term<DD>This is the second definition in compact format.
</DL>
Phrases may be marked up according to idiomatic usage, typographic
appearance, or for use as hyperlink anchors.
User agents must render highlighted phrases distinctly from plain
text. Additionally, <EM> content must be rendered as distinct from
<STRONG> content, and <B> content must rendered as distinct from <I>
content.
Phrase elements may be nested within the content of other phrase
elements; however, HTML user agents may render nested phrase elements
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indistinctly from non-nested elements:
plain <B>bold <I>italic</I></B> may be rendered
the same as plain <B>bold </B><I>italic</I>
Phrases may be marked up to indicate certain idioms.
NOTE - User agents may support the <DFN> element, not included in
this specification, as it has been deployed to some extent. It is
used to indicate the defining instance of a term, and it is
typically rendered in italic or bold italic.
The <CITE> element is used to indicate the title of a book or
other citation. It is typically rendered as italics. For example:
He just couldn't get enough of <cite>The Grapes of Wrath</cite>.
The <CODE> element indicates an example of code, typically
rendered in a mono-spaced font. The <CODE> element is intended for
short words or phrases of code; the <PRE> block structuring
element (5.5.2, "Preformatted Text: PRE") is more appropriate
for multiple-line listings. For example:
The expression <code>x += 1</code>
is short for <code>x = x + 1</code>.
The <KBD> element indicates text typed by a user, typically
rendered in a mono-spaced font. This is commonly used in
instruction manuals. For example:
Enter <kbd>FIND IT</kbd> to search the database.
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The <SAMP> element indicates a sequence of literal characters,
typically rendered in a mono-spaced font. For example:
The only word containing the letters <samp>mt</samp> is dreamt.
The <STRONG> element indicates strong emphasis, typically rendered
in bold. For example:
<strong>STOP</strong>, or I'll say "<strong>STOP</strong>" again!
The <VAR> element indicates a placeholder variable, typically
rendered as italic. For example:
Type <SAMP>html-check <VAR>file</VAR> | more</SAMP>
to check <VAR>file</VAR> for markup errors.
Typographic elements are used to specify the format of marked
text.
Typical renderings for idiomatic elements may vary between user
agents. If a specific rendering is necessary -- for example, when
referring to a specific text attribute as in "The italic parts are
mandatory" -- a typographic element can be used to ensure that the
intended typography is used where possible.
NOTE - User agents may support some typographic elements not
included in this specification, as they have been deployed to some
extent. The <STRIKE> element indicates horizontal line through the
characters, and the <U> element indicates an underline.
The <I> element indicates italic text. Where italic typography is
unavailable, an alternative representation may be used.
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The <A> element indicates a hyperlink anchor (see 7, "Hyperlinks").
At least one of the NAME and HREF attributes should be present.
Attributes of the <A> element:
HREF
gives the URI of the head anchor of a hyperlink.
NAME
gives the name of the anchor, and makes it available as
a head of a hyperlink.
TITLE
suggests a title for the destination resource --
advisory only. The TITLE attribute may be used:
* for display prior to accessing the destination
resource, for example, as a margin note or on a
small box while the mouse is over the anchor, or
while the document is being loaded;
* for resources that do not include a title, such as
graphics, plain text and Gopher menus, for use as a
window title.
REL
The REL attribute gives the relationship(s) described by
the hyperlink. The value is a whitespace separated list
of relationship names. The semantics of link
relationships are not specified in this document.
REV
same as the REL attribute, but the semantics of the
relationship are in the reverse direction. A link from A
to B with REL="X" expresses the same relationship as a
link from B to A with REV="X". An anchor may have both
REL and REV attributes.
URN
specifies a preferred, more persistent identifier for
the head anchor of the hyperlink. The syntax and
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semantics of the URN attribute are not yet specified.
METHODS
specifies methods to be used in accessing the
destination, as a whitespace-separated list of names.
The set of applicable names is a function of the scheme
of the URI in the HREF attribute. For similar reasons as
for the TITLE attribute, it may be useful to include the
information in advance in the link. For example, the
HTML user agent may chose a different rendering as a
function of the methods allowed; for example, something
that is searchable may get a different icon.
The <BR> element specifies a line break between words (see 6,
"Characters, Words, and Paragraphs"). For example:
<P> Pease porridge hot<BR>
Pease porridge cold<BR>
Pease porridge in the pot<BR>
Nine days old.
The <HR> element is a divider between sections of text; typically a
full width horizontal rule or equivalent graphic. For example:
<HR>
<ADDRESS>February 8, 1995, CERN</ADDRESS>
</BODY>
The <IMG> element refers to an image or icon via a hyperlink (see
7.3, "Simultaneous Presentation of Image Resources").
HTML user agents may process the value of the ALT attribute as an
alternative to processing the image resource indicated by the SRC
attribute.
NOTE - Some HTML user agents can process graphics linked via
anchors, but not <IMG> graphics. If a graphic is essential, it
should be referenced from an <A> element rather than an <IMG>
element. If the graphic is not essential, then the <IMG> element
is appropriate.
Attributes of the <IMG> element:
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ALIGN
alignment of the image with respect to the text
baseline.
* `TOP' specifies that the top of the image aligns
with the tallest item on the line containing the
image.
* `MIDDLE' specifies that the center of the image
aligns with the baseline of the line containing the
image.
* `BOTTOM' specifies that the bottom of the image
aligns with the baseline of the line containing the
image.
ALT
text to use in place of the referenced image resource,
for example due to processing constraints or user
preference.
ISMAP
indicates an image map (see 7.6, "Image Maps").
SRC
specifies the URI of the image resource.
NOTE - In practice, the media types of image
resources are limited to a few raster graphic
formats: typically `image/gif', `image/jpeg'. In
particular, `text/html' resources are not
intended to be used as image resources.
Examples of use:
<IMG SRC="triangle.xbm" ALT="Warning:"> Be sure
to read these instructions.
<a href="http://machine/htbin/imagemap/sample">
<IMG SRC="sample.xbm" ISMAP>
</a>
An HTML user agent should present the body of an HTML document as a
collection of typeset paragraphs and preformatted text. Except for
preformatted elements (<PRE>, <XMP>, <LISTING>, <TEXTAREA>), each
block structuring element is regarded as a paragraph by taking the
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data characters in its content and the content of its descendant
elements, concatenating them, and splitting the result into words,
separated by space, tab, or record end characters (and perhaps hyphen
characters). The sequence of words is typeset as a paragraph by
breaking it into lines.
The document character set specified in 9.5, "SGML Declaration for
HTML" must be supported by HTML user agents. It includes the graphic
characters of Latin Alphabet No. 1, or simply Latin-1. Latin-1
comprises 191 graphic characters, including the alphabets of most
Western European languages.
NOTE - Use of the non-breaking space and soft hyphen indicator
characters is discouraged because support for them is not widely
deployed.
NOTE - To support non-western writing systems, a larger character
repertoire will be specified in a future version of HTML. The
document character set will be [ISO-10646], or some subset that
agrees with [ISO-10646]; in particular, all numeric character
references must use code positions assigned by [ISO-10646].
In SGML applications, the use of control characters is limited in
order to maximize the chance of successful interchange over
heterogeneous networks and operating systems. In the HTML document
character set only three control characters are allowed: Horizontal
Tab, Carriage Return, and Line Feed (code positions 9, 13, and 10).
The HTML DTD references the Added Latin 1 entity set, to allow
mnemonic representation of selected Latin 1 characters using only the
widely supported ASCII character repertoire. For example:
Kurt Gödel was a famous logician and mathematician.
See 9.7.2, "ISO Latin 1 Character Entity Set" for a table of the
"Added Latin 1" entities, and 13, "The HTML Coded Character Set" for
a table of the code positions of [ISO 8859-1] and the control
characters in the HTML document character set.
In addition to general purpose elements such as paragraphs and lists,
HTML documents can express hyperlinks. An HTML user agent allows the
user to navigate these hyperlinks.
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A hyperlink is a relationship between two anchors, called the head
and the tail of the hyperlink[DEXTER]. Anchors are identified by an
anchor address: an absolute Uniform Resource Identifier (URI),
optionally followed by a '#' and a sequence of characters called a
fragment identifier. For example:
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html#z31
In an anchor address, the URI refers to a resource; it may be used in
a variety of information retrieval protocols to obtain an entity that
represents the resource, such as an HTML document. The fragment
identifier, if present, refers to some view on, or portion of the
resource.
Each of the following markup constructs indicates the tail anchor of
a hyperlink or set of hyperlinks:
* <A> elements with HREF present.
* <LINK> elements.
* <IMG> elements.
* <INPUT> elements with the SRC attribute present.
* <ISINDEX> elements.
* <FORM> elements with `METHOD=GET'.
These markup constructs refer to head anchors by a URI, either
absolute or relative, or a fragment identifier, or both.
In the case of a relative URI, the absolute URI in the address of the
head anchor is the result of combining the relative URI with a base
absolute URI as in [RELURL]. The base document is taken from the
document's <BASE> element, if present; else, it is determined as in
[RELURL].
Once the address of the head anchor is determined, the user agent may
obtain a representation of the resource.
For example, if the base URI is `http://host/x/y.html' and the
document contains:
<img src="../icons/abc.gif">
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then the user agent uses the URI `http://host/icons/abc.gif' to
access the resource, as in [URL]..
An HTML user agent allows the user to navigate the content of the
document and request activation of hyperlinks denoted by <A>
elements. HTML user agents should also allow activation of <LINK>
element hyperlinks.
To activate a link, the user agent obtains a representation of the
resource identified in the address of the head anchor. If the
representation is another HTML document, navigation may begin again
with this new document.
An HTML user agent may activate hyperlinks indicated by <IMG> and
<INPUT> elements concurrently with processing the document; that is,
image hyperlinks may be processed without explicit request by the
user. Image resources should be embedded in the presentation at the
point of the tail anchor, that is the <IMG> or <INPUT> element.
<LINK> hyperlinks may also be processed without explicit user
request; for example, style sheet resources may be processed before
or during the processing of the document.
Any characters following a `#' character in a hypertext address
constitute a fragment identifier. In particular, an address of the
form `#fragment' refers to an anchor in the same document.
The meaning of fragment identifiers depends on the media type of the
representation of the anchor's resource. For `text/html'
representations, it refers to the <A> element with a NAME attribute
whose value is the same as the fragment identifier. The matching is
case sensitive. The document should have exactly one such element.
The user agent should indicate the anchor element, for example by
scrolling to and/or highlighting the phrase.
For example, if the base URI is `http://host/x/y.html' and the user
activated the link denoted by the following markup:
<p> See: <a href="app1.html#bananas">appendix 1</a>
for more detail on bananas.
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Then the user agent accesses the resource identified by
`http://host/x/app1.html'. Assuming the resource is represented using
the `text/html' media type, the user agent must locate the <A>
element whose NAME attribute is `bananas' and begin navigation there.
The <ISINDEX> element represents a set of hyperlinks. The user can
choose from the set by providing keywords to the user agent. The
user agent computes the head URI by appending `?' and the keywords to
the base URI. The keywords are escaped according to [URL] and joined
by `+'. For example, if a document contains:
<BASE HREF="http://host/index">
<ISINDEX>
and the user provides the keywords `apple' and `berry', then the
user agent must access the resource
`http://host/index?apple+berry'.
<FORM> elements with `METHOD=GET' also represent sets of
hyperlinks. See 8.2.2, "Query Forms: METHOD=GET" for details.
If the ISMAP attribute is present on an <IMG> element, the <IMG>
element must be contained in an <A> element with an HREF present.
This construct represents a set of hyperlinks. The user can choose
from the set by choosing a pixel of the image. The user agent
computes the head URI by appending `?' and the x and y coordinates of
the pixel to the URI given in the <A> element. For example, if a
document contains:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<head><title>ImageMap Example</title>
<BASE HREF="http://host/index"></head>
<body>
<p> Choose any of these icons:<br>
<a href="/cgi-bin/imagemap"><img ismap src="icons.gif"></a>
and the user chooses the upper-leftmost pixel, the chosen
hyperlink is the one with the URI
`http://host/cgi-bin/imagemap?0,0'.
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A form is a template for a form data set and an associated
method and action URI. A form data set is a sequence of
name/value pair fields. The names are specified on the NAME
attributes of form input elements, and the values are given
initial values by various forms of markup and edited by the
user. The resulting form data set is used to access an
information service as a function of the action and method.
Forms elements can be mixed in with document structuring
elements. For example, a <PRE> element may contain a <FORM>
element, or a <FORM> element may contain lists which contain
<INPUT> elements. This gives considerable flexibility in
designing the layout of forms.
Form processing is a level 2 feature.
The <FORM> element contains a sequence of input elements, along
with document structuring elements. The attributes are:
ACTION
specifies the action URI for the form. The action URI of
a form defaults to the base URI of the document (see 7,
"Hyperlinks").
METHOD
selects a method of accessing the action URI. The set of
applicable methods is a function of the scheme of the
action URI of the form. See 8.2.2, "Query Forms:
METHOD=GET" and 8.2.3, "Forms with Side-Effects:
METHOD=POST".
ENCTYPE
specifies the media type used to encode the name/value
pairs for transport, in case the protocol does not
itself impose a format. See 8.2.1, "The form-urlencoded
Media Type".
The <INPUT> element represents a field for user input. The TYPE
attribute discriminates between several variations of fields.
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The <INPUT> element has a number of attributes. The set of applicable
attributes depends on the value of the TYPE attribute.
The default value of the TYPE attribute is `TEXT', indicating a
single line text entry field. (Use the <TEXTAREA> element for multi-
line text fields.)
Required attributes are:
NAME
name for the form field corresponding to this element.
The optional attributes are:
MAXLENGTH
constrains the number of characters that can be entered
into a text input field. If the value of MAXLENGTH is
greater the the value of the SIZE attribute, the field
should scroll appropriately. The default number of
characters is unlimited.
SIZE
specifies the amount of display space allocated to this
input field according to its type. The default depends
on the user agent.
VALUE
The initial value of the field.
For example:
<p>Street Address: <input name=street><br>
Postal City code: <input name=city size=16 maxlength=16><br>
Zip Code: <input name=zip size=10 maxlength=10 value="99999-9999"><br>
An <INPUT> element with `TYPE=PASSWORD' is a text field as above,
except that the value is obscured as it is entered. (see also: 10,
"Security Considerations").
For example:
<p>Name: <input name=login> Password: <input type=password name=passwd>
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An <INPUT> element with `TYPE=CHECKBOX' represents a boolean choice.
A set of such elements with the same name represents an n-of-many
choice field. Required attributes are:
NAME
symbolic name for the form field corresponding to this
element or group of elements.
VALUE
The portion of the value of the field contributed by
this element.
Optional attributes are:
CHECKED
indicates that the initial state is on.
For example:
<p>What flavors do you like?
<input type=checkbox name=flavor value=vanilla>Vanilla<br>
<input type=checkbox name=flavor value=strawberry>Strawberry<br>
<input type=checkbox name=flavor value=chocolate checked>Chocolate<br>
An <INPUT> element with `TYPE=RADIO' represents a boolean choice. A
set of such elements with the same name represents a 1-of-many choice
field. The NAME and VALUE attributes are required as for check boxes.
Optional attributes are:
CHECKED
indicates that the initial state is on.
At all times, exactly one of the radio buttons in a set is checked.
If none of the <INPUT> elements of a set of radio buttons specifies
`CHECKED', then the user agent must check the first radio button of
the set initially.
For example:
<p>Which is your favorite?
<input type=radio name=flavor value=vanilla>Vanilla<br>
<input type=radio name=flavor value=strawberry>Strawberry<br>
<input type=radio name=flavor value=chocolate>Chocolate<br>
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An <INPUT> element with `TYPE=IMAGE' specifies an image resource to
display, and allows input of two form fields: the x and y coordinate
of a pixel chosen from the image. The names of the fields are the
name of the field with `.x' and `.y' appended. `TYPE=IMAGE' implies
`TYPE=SUBMIT' processing; that is, when a pixel is chosen, the form
as a whole is submitted.
The NAME attribute is required as for other input fields. The SRC
attribute is required and the ALIGN is optional as for the <IMG>
element (see 5.10, "Image: IMG").
For example:
<p>Choose a point on the map:
<input type=image name=point src="map.gif">
An <INPUT> element with `TYPE=HIDDEN' represents a hidden field.The
user does not interact with this field; instead, the VALUE attribute
specifies the value of the field. The NAME and VALUE attributes are
required.
For example:
<input type=hidden name=context value="l2k3j4l2k3j4l2k3j4lk23">
An <INPUT> element with `TYPE=SUBMIT' represents an input option,
typically a button, that instructs the user agent to submit the form.
Optional attributes are:
NAME
indicates that this element contributes a form field
whose value is given by the VALUE attribute. If the NAME
attribute is not present, this element does not
contribute a form field.
VALUE
indicates a label for the input (button).
You may submit this request internally:
<input type=submit name=recipient value=internal><br>
or to the external world:
<input type=submit name=recipient value=world>
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An <INPUT> element with `TYPE=RESET' represents an input option,
typically a button, that instructs the user agent to reset the form's
fields to their initial states. The VALUE attribute, if present,
indicates a label for the input (button).
When you are finished, you may submit this request:
<input type=submit><br>
You may clear the form and start over at any time: <input type=reset>
The <SELECT> element constrains the form field to an enumerated list
of values. The values are given in <OPTION> elements. Attributes
are:
MULTIPLE
indicates that more than one option may be included in
the value.
NAME
specifies the name of the form field.
SIZE
specifies the number of visible items. Select fields of
size one are typically pop-down menus, whereas select
fields with size greater than one are typically lists.
For example:
<SELECT NAME="flavor">
<OPTION>Vanilla
<OPTION>Strawberry
<OPTION value="RumRasin">Rum and Raisin
<OPTION selected>Peach and Orange
</SELECT>
The initial state has the first option selected, unless a SELECTED
attribute is present on any of the <OPTION> elements.
The Option element can only occur within a Select element. It
represents one choice, and has the following attributes:
SELECTED
Indicates that this option is initially selected.
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VALUE
indicates the value to be returned if this option is
chosen. The field value defaults to the content of the
<OPTION> element.
The content of the <OPTION> element is presented to the user to
represent the option. It is used as a returned value if the VALUE
attribute is not present.
The <TEXTAREA> element represents a multi-line text field.
Attributes are:
COLS
the number of visible columns to display for the text
area, in characters.
NAME
Specifies the name of the form field.
ROWS
The number of visible rows to display for the text area,
in characters.
For example:
<TEXTAREA NAME="address" ROWS=6 COLS=64>
HaL Computer Systems
1315 Dell Avenue
Campbell, California 95008
</TEXTAREA>
The content of the <TEXTAREA> element is the field's initial value.
Typically, the ROWS and COLS attributes determine the visible
dimension of the field in characters. The field is typically rendered
in a fixed-width font. HTML user agents should allow text to extend
beyond these limits by scrolling as needed.
An HTML user agent begins processing a form by presenting the
document with the fields in their initial state. The user is allowed
to modify the fields, constrained by the field type etc. When the
user indicates that the form should be submitted (using a submit
button or image input), the form data set is processed according to
its method, action URI and enctype.
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When there is only one single-line text input field in a form, the
user agent should accept Enter in that field as a request to submit
the form.
The default encoding for all forms is `application/x-www-form-
urlencoded'. A form data set is represented in this media type as
follows:
1. The form field names and values are escaped: space
characters are replaced by `+', and then reserved characters
are escaped as per [URL]; that is, non-alphanumeric
characters are replaced by `%HH', a percent sign and two
hexadecimal digits representing the ASCII code of the
character. Line breaks, as in multi-line text field values,
are represented as CR LF pairs, i.e. `%0D%0A'.
2. The fields are listed in the order they appear in the
document with the name separated from the value by `=' and
the pairs separated from each other by `&'. Fields with null
values may be omitted. In particular, unselected radio
buttons and checkboxes should not appear in the encoded
data, but hidden fields with VALUE attributes present
should.
NOTE - The URI from a query form submission can be
used in a normal anchor style hyperlink.
Unfortunately, the use of the `&' character to
separate form fields interacts with its use in SGML
attribute values as an entity reference delimiter.
For example, the URI `http://host/?x=1&y=2' must be
written `<a href="http://host/?x=1&y=2"' or `<a
href="http://host/?x=1&y=2">'.
HTTP server implementors, and in particular, CGI
implementors are encouraged to support the use of
`;' in place of `&' to save users the trouble of
escaping `&' characters this way.
If the processing of a form is idempotent (i.e. it has no lasting
observable effect on the state of the world), then the form method
should be `GET'. Many database searches have no visible side-effects
and make ideal applications of query forms.
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To process a form whose action URL is an HTTP URL and whose method is
`GET', the user agent starts with the action URI and appends a `?'
and the form data set, in `application/x-www-form-urlencoded' format
as above. The user agent then traverses the link to this URI just as
if it were an anchor (see 7.2, "Activation of Hyperlinks").
NOTE - The URL encoding may result in very long URIs, which cause
some historical HTTP server implementations to exhibit defective
behavior. As a result, some HTML forms are written using
`METHOD=POST' even though the form submission has no side-effects.
If the service associated with the processing of a form has side
effects (for example, modification of a database or subscription to a
service), the method should be `POST'.
To process a form whose action URL is an HTTP URL and whose method is
`POST', the user agent conducts an HTTP POST transaction using the
action URI, and a message body of type `application/x-www-form-
urlencoded' format as above. The user agent should display the
response from the HTTP POST interaction just as it would display the
response from an HTTP GET above.
Consider the following document:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<title>Sample of HTML Form Submission</title>
<H1>Sample Questionnaire</H1>
<P>Please fill out this questionnaire:
<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="http://www.w3.org/sample">
<P>Your name: <INPUT NAME="name" size="48">
<P>Male <INPUT NAME="gender" TYPE=RADIO VALUE="male">
<P>Female <INPUT NAME="gender" TYPE=RADIO VALUE="female">
<P>Number in family: <INPUT NAME="family" TYPE=text>
<P>Cities in which you maintain a residence:
<UL>
<LI>Kent <INPUT NAME="city" TYPE=checkbox VALUE="kent">
<LI>Miami <INPUT NAME="city" TYPE=checkbox VALUE="miami">
<LI>Other <TEXTAREA NAME="other" cols=48 rows=4></textarea>
</UL>
Nickname: <INPUT NAME="nickname" SIZE="42">
<P>Thank you for responding to this questionnaire.
<P><INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT> <INPUT TYPE=RESET>
</FORM>
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The initial state of the form data set is:
name
""
gender
"male"
family
""
other
""
nickname
""
Note that the radio input has an initial value, while the
checkbox has none.
The user might edit the fields and request that the form be
submitted. At that point, suppose the values are:
name
"John Doe"
gender
"male"
family
"5"
city
"kent"
city
"miami"
other
"abc\ndefk"
nickname
"J&D"
The user agent then conducts an HTTP POST transaction using the URI
`http://www.w3.org/sample'. The message body would be (ignore the
line break):
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RFC 1866 Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 November 1995
name=John+Doe&gender=male&family=5&city=kent&city=miami&
other=abc%0D%0Adef&nickname=J%26D
This document type declaration refers to the HTML DTD with the
`HTML.Recommended' entity defined as `INCLUDE' rather than IGNORE;
that is, it refers to the more structurally rigid definition of HTML.
<!-- html-s.dtd
Document Type Definition for the HyperText Markup Language
with strict validation (HTML Strict DTD).
$Id: html-s.dtd,v 1.3 1995/06/02 18:55:46 connolly Exp $
Author: Daniel W. Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
See Also: http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html
-->
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RFC 1866 Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 November 1995
<!ENTITY % HTML.Version
"-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Strict//EN"
-- Typical usage:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
"-//IETF//DTD HTML Strict//EN">
<html>
...
</html>
--
>
<!-- Feature Test Entities -->
<!ENTITY % HTML.Recommended "INCLUDE">
<!ENTITY % html PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
%html;
This document type declaration refers to the HTML DTD with the
`HTML.Forms' entity defined as `IGNORE' rather than `INCLUDE'.
Documents which contain <FORM> elements do not conform to this DTD,
and must use the level 2 DTD.
<!-- html-1.dtd
Document Type Definition for the HyperText Markup Language
with Level 1 Extensions (HTML Level 1 DTD).
$Id: html-1.dtd,v 1.2 1995/03/29 18:53:10 connolly Exp $
Author: Daniel W. Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
See Also: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html
-->
<!ENTITY % HTML.Version
"-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Level 1//EN"
-- Typical usage:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
"-//IETF//DTD HTML Level 1//EN">
<html>
...
</html>
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--
>
<!-- Feature Test Entities -->
<!ENTITY % HTML.Forms "IGNORE">
<!ENTITY % html PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
%html;
This document type declaration refers to the level 1 HTML DTD with
the `HTML.Recommended' entity defined as `INCLUDE' rather than
IGNORE; that is, it refers to the more structurally rigid definition
of HTML.
<!-- html-1s.dtd
Document Type Definition for the HyperText Markup Language
Struct Level 1
$Id: html-1s.dtd,v 1.3 1995/06/02 18:55:43 connolly Exp $
Author: Daniel W. Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
See Also: http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html
-->
<!ENTITY % HTML.Version
"-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Strict Level 1//EN"
-- Typical usage:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
"-//IETF//DTD HTML Strict Level 1//EN">
<html>
...
</html>
--
>
<!-- Feature Test Entities -->
<!ENTITY % HTML.Recommended "INCLUDE">
<!ENTITY % html-1 PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Level 1//EN">
%html-1;
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The SGML standard describes an "entity manager" as the portion or
component of an SGML system that maps SGML entities into the actual
storage model (e.g., the file system). The standard itself does not
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define a particular mapping methodology or notation.
To assist the interoperability among various SGML tools and systems,
the SGML Open consortium has passed a technical resolution that
defines a format for an application-independent entity catalog that
maps external identifiers and/or entity names to file names.
Each entry in the catalog associates a storage object identifier
(such as a file name) with information about the external entity that
appears in the SGML document. In addition to entries that associate
public identifiers, a catalog entry can associate an entity name with
a storage object identifier. For example, the following are possible
catalog entries:
-- catalog: SGML Open style entity catalog for HTML --
-- $Id: catalog,v 1.3 1995/09/21 23:30:23 connolly Exp $ --
-- Ways to refer to Level 2: most general to most specific --
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN" html.dtd
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN" html.dtd
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML Level 2//EN" html.dtd
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Level 2//EN" html.dtd
-- Ways to refer to Level 1: most general to most specific --
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML Level 1//EN" html-1.dtd
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Level 1//EN" html-1.dtd
-- Ways to refer to
Strict Level 2: most general to most specific --
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML Strict//EN" html-s.dtd
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Strict//EN" html-s.dtd
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML Strict Level 2//EN" html-s.dtd
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Strict Level 2//EN" html-s.dtd
-- Ways to refer to
Strict Level 1: most general to most specific --
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML Strict Level 1//EN" html-1s.dtd
PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0 Strict Level 1//EN" html-1s.dtd
-- ISO latin 1 entity set for HTML --
PUBLIC "ISO 8879-1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN//HTML" ISOlat1\
sgml
The HTML DTD defines the following entities. They represent
particular graphic characters which have special meanings in places
in the markup, or may not be part of the character set available to
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RFC 1866 Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 November 1995
the writer.
The following table lists each of the characters included from the
Numeric and Special Graphic entity set, along with its name, syntax
for use, and description. This list is derived from `ISO Standard
8879:1986//ENTITIES Numeric and Special Graphic//EN'. However, HTML
does not include for the entire entity set -- only the entities
listed below are included.
GLYPH NAME SYNTAX DESCRIPTION
< lt < Less than sign
> gt > Greater than signn
& amp & Ampersand
" quot " Double quote sign
The following public text lists each of the characters specified in
the Added Latin 1 entity set, along with its name, syntax for use,
and description. This list is derived from ISO Standard
8879:1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN. HTML includes the entire
entity set.
<!-- (C) International Organization for Standardization 1986
Permission to copy in any form is granted for use with
conforming SGML systems and applications as defined in
ISO 8879, provided this notice is included in all copies.
-->
<!-- Character entity set. Typical invocation:
<!ENTITY % ISOlat1 PUBLIC
"ISO 8879-1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN//HTML">
%ISOlat1;
-->
<!-- Modified for use in HTML
$Id: ISOlat1.sgml,v 1.2 1994/11/30 23:45:12 connolly Exp $ -->
<!ENTITY AElig CDATA "Æ" -- capital AE diphthong (ligature) -->
<!ENTITY Aacute CDATA "Á" -- capital A, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY Acirc CDATA "Â" -- capital A, circumflex accent -->
<!ENTITY Agrave CDATA "À" -- capital A, grave accent -->
<!ENTITY Aring CDATA "Å" -- capital A, ring -->
<!ENTITY Atilde CDATA "Ã" -- capital A, tilde -->
<!ENTITY Auml CDATA "Ä" -- capital A, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY Ccedil CDATA "Ç" -- capital C, cedilla -->
<!ENTITY ETH CDATA "Ð" -- capital Eth, Icelandic -->
<!ENTITY Eacute CDATA "É" -- capital E, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY Ecirc CDATA "Ê" -- capital E, circumflex accent -->
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RFC 1866 Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 November 1995
<!ENTITY Egrave CDATA "È" -- capital E, grave accent -->
<!ENTITY Euml CDATA "Ë" -- capital E, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY Iacute CDATA "Í" -- capital I, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY Icirc CDATA "Î" -- capital I, circumflex accent -->
<!ENTITY Igrave CDATA "Ì" -- capital I, grave accent -->
<!ENTITY Iuml CDATA "Ï" -- capital I, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY Ntilde CDATA "Ñ" -- capital N, tilde -->
<!ENTITY Oacute CDATA "Ó" -- capital O, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY Ocirc CDATA "Ô" -- capital O, circumflex accent -->
<!ENTITY Ograve CDATA "Ò" -- capital O, grave accent -->
<!ENTITY Oslash CDATA "Ø" -- capital O, slash -->
<!ENTITY Otilde CDATA "Õ" -- capital O, tilde -->
<!ENTITY Ouml CDATA "Ö" -- capital O, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY THORN CDATA "Þ" -- capital THORN, Icelandic -->
<!ENTITY Uacute CDATA "Ú" -- capital U, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY Ucirc CDATA "Û" -- capital U, circumflex accent -->
<!ENTITY Ugrave CDATA "Ù" -- capital U, grave accent -->
<!ENTITY Uuml CDATA "Ü" -- capital U, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY Yacute CDATA "Ý" -- capital Y, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY aacute CDATA "á" -- small a, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY acirc CDATA "â" -- small a, circumflex accent -->
<!ENTITY aelig CDATA "æ" -- small ae diphthong (ligature) -->
<!ENTITY agrave CDATA "à" -- small a, grave accent -->
<!ENTITY aring CDATA "å" -- small a, ring -->
<!ENTITY atilde CDATA "ã" -- small a, tilde -->
<!ENTITY auml CDATA "ä" -- small a, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY ccedil CDATA "ç" -- small c, cedilla -->
<!ENTITY eacute CDATA "é" -- small e, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY ecirc CDATA "ê" -- small e, circumflex accent -->
<!ENTITY egrave CDATA "è" -- small e, grave accent -->
<!ENTITY eth CDATA "ð" -- small eth, Icelandic -->
<!ENTITY euml CDATA "ë" -- small e, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY iacute CDATA "í" -- small i, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY icirc CDATA "î" -- small i, circumflex accent -->
<!ENTITY igrave CDATA "ì" -- small i, grave accent -->
<!ENTITY iuml CDATA "ï" -- small i, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY ntilde CDATA "ñ" -- small n, tilde -->
<!ENTITY oacute CDATA "ó" -- small o, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY ocirc CDATA "ô" -- small o, circumflex accent -->
<!ENTITY ograve CDATA "ò" -- small o, grave accent -->
<!ENTITY oslash CDATA "ø" -- small o, slash -->
<!ENTITY otilde CDATA "õ" -- small o, tilde -->
<!ENTITY ouml CDATA "ö" -- small o, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY szlig CDATA "ß" -- small sharp s, German (sz ligature)->
<!ENTITY thorn CDATA "þ" -- small thorn, Icelandic -->
<!ENTITY uacute CDATA "ú" -- small u, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY ucirc CDATA "û" -- small u, circumflex accent -->
<!ENTITY ugrave CDATA "ù" -- small u, grave accent -->
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RFC 1866 Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 November 1995
<!ENTITY uuml CDATA "ü" -- small u, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
<!ENTITY yacute CDATA "ý" -- small y, acute accent -->
<!ENTITY yuml CDATA "ÿ" -- small y, dieresis or umlaut mark -->
Anchors, embedded images, and all other elements which contain URIs
as parameters may cause the URI to be dereferenced in response to
user input. In this case, the security considerations of [URL] apply.
The widely deployed methods for submitting forms requests -- HTTP and
SMTP -- provide little assurance of confidentiality. Information
providers who request sensitive information via forms -- especially
by way of the `PASSWORD' type input field (see 8.1.2, "Input Field:
INPUT") -- should be aware and make their users aware of the lack of
confidentiality.
[URI]
Berners-Lee, T., "Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW:
A Unifying Syntax for the Expression of Names and
Addresses of Objects on the Network as used in the
World- Wide Web", RFC 1630, CERN, June 1994.
<URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1630.txt>
[URL]
Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., and M. McCahill, "Uniform
Resource Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, CERN, Xerox PARC,
University of Minnesota, December 1994.
<URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1738.txt>
[HTTP]
Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and H. Frystyk Nielsen,
"Hypertext Transfer Protocol - HTTP/1.0", Work in
Progress, MIT, UC Irvine, CERN, March 1995.
[MIME]
Borenstein, N., and N. Freed. "MIME (Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extensions) Part One: Mechanisms for
Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC 1521, Bellcore, Innosoft, September 1993.
<URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1521.txt>
[RELURL]
Fielding, R., "Relative Uniform Resource Locators", RFC
1808, June 1995
<URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1808.txt>
Berners-Lee & Connolly Standards Track [Page 69]
RFC 1866 Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 November 1995
[GOLD90]
Goldfarb, C., "The SGML Handbook", Y. Rubinsky, Ed.,
Oxford University Press, 1990.
[DEXTER]
Frank Halasz and Mayer Schwartz, "The Dexter Hypertext
Reference Model", Communications of the ACM, pp.
30-39, vol. 37 no. 2, Feb 1994.
[IMEDIA]
Postel, J., "Media Type Registration Procedure",
RFC 1590, USC/Information Sciences Institute, March 1994.
<URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1590.txt>
[IANA]
Reynolds, J., and J. Postel, "Assigned Numbers", STD 2,
RFC 1700, USC/Information Sciecnes Institute, October
1994. <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1700.txt>
[SQ91]
SoftQuad. "The SGML Primer", 3rd ed., SoftQuad Inc.,
1991. <URL:http://www.sq.com/>
[ISO-646]
ISO/IEC 646:1991 Information technology -- ISO 7-bit
coded character set for information interchange
<URL:http://www.iso.ch/cate/d4777.html>
[ISO-10646]
ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993 Information technology -- Universal
Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) -- Part 1:
Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane
<URL:http://www.iso.ch/cate/d18741.html>
[ISO-8859-1]
ISO 8859. International Standard -- Information
Processing -- 8-bit Single-Byte Coded Graphic Character
Sets -- Part 1: Latin Alphabet No. 1, ISO 8859-1:1987.
<URL:http://www.iso.ch/cate/d16338.html>
[SGML]
ISO 8879. Information Processing -- Text and Office
Systems - Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML),
1986. <URL:http://www.iso.ch/cate/d16387.html>
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The HTML document type was designed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN as
part of the 1990 World Wide Web project. In 1992, Dan Connolly wrote
the HTML Document Type Definition (DTD) and a brief HTML
specification.
Since 1993, a wide variety of Internet participants have contributed
to the evolution of HTML, which has included the addition of in-line
images introduced by the NCSA Mosaic software for WWW. Dave Raggett
played an important role in deriving the forms material from the
HTML+ specification.
Dan Connolly and Karen Olson Muldrow rewrote the HTML Specification
in 1994. The document was then edited by the HTML working group as a
whole, with updates being made by Eric Schieler, Mike Knezovich, and
Eric W. Sink at Spyglass, Inc. Finally, Roy Fielding restructured
the entire draft into its current form.
Special thanks to the many active participants in the HTML working
group, too numerous to list individually, without whom there would be
no standards process and no standard. That this document approaches
its objective of carefully converging a description of current
practice and formalization of HTML's relationship to SGML is a
tribute to their effort.
This list details the code positions and characters of the HTML
document character set, specified in 9.5, "SGML Declaration for
HTML". This coded character set is based on [ISO-8859-1].
REFERENCE DESCRIPTION
-------------- -----------
� -  Unused
	 Horizontal tab
Line feed
 -  Unused
Carriage Return
 -  Unused
  Space
! Exclamation mark
" Quotation mark
# Number sign
$ Dollar sign
% Percent sign
& Ampersand
' Apostrophe
( Left parenthesis
) Right parenthesis
* Asterisk
+ Plus sign
, Comma
- Hyphen
. Period (fullstop)
/ Solidus (slash)
0 - 9 Digits 0-9
: Colon
; Semi-colon
< Less than
= Equals sign
> Greater than
? Question mark
@ Commercial at
A - Z Letters A-Z
[ Left square bracket
\ Reverse solidus (backslash)
] Right square bracket
^ Caret
_ Horizontal bar (underscore)
` Acute accent
a - z Letters a-z
{ Left curly brace
| Vertical bar
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} Right curly brace
~ Tilde
 - Ÿ Unused
  Non-breaking Space
¡ Inverted exclamation
¢ Cent sign
£ Pound sterling
¤ General currency sign
¥ Yen sign
¦ Broken vertical bar
§ Section sign
¨ Umlaut (dieresis)
© Copyright
ª Feminine ordinal
« Left angle quote, guillemotleft
¬ Not sign
­ Soft hyphen
® Registered trademark
¯ Macron accent
° Degree sign
± Plus or minus
² Superscript two
³ Superscript three
´ Acute accent
µ Micro sign
¶ Paragraph sign
· Middle dot
¸ Cedilla
¹ Superscript one
º Masculine ordinal
» Right angle quote, guillemotright
¼ Fraction one-fourth
½ Fraction one-half
¾ Fraction three-fourths
¿ Inverted question mark
À Capital A, grave accent
Á Capital A, acute accent
 Capital A, circumflex accent
à Capital A, tilde
Ä Capital A, dieresis or umlaut mark
Å Capital A, ring
Æ Capital AE dipthong (ligature)
Ç Capital C, cedilla
È Capital E, grave accent
É Capital E, acute accent
Ê Capital E, circumflex accent
Ë Capital E, dieresis or umlaut mark
Ì Capital I, grave accent
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Í Capital I, acute accent
Î Capital I, circumflex accent
Ï Capital I, dieresis or umlaut mark
Ð Capital Eth, Icelandic
Ñ Capital N, tilde
Ò Capital O, grave accent
Ó Capital O, acute accent
Ô Capital O, circumflex accent
Õ Capital O, tilde
Ö Capital O, dieresis or umlaut mark
× Multiply sign
Ø Capital O, slash
Ù Capital U, grave accent
Ú Capital U, acute accent
Û Capital U, circumflex accent
Ü Capital U, dieresis or umlaut mark
Ý Capital Y, acute accent
Þ Capital THORN, Icelandic
ß Small sharp s, German (sz ligature)
à Small a, grave accent
á Small a, acute accent
â Small a, circumflex accent
ã Small a, tilde
ä Small a, dieresis or umlaut mark
å Small a, ring
æ Small ae dipthong (ligature)
ç Small c, cedilla
è Small e, grave accent
é Small e, acute accent
ê Small e, circumflex accent
ë Small e, dieresis or umlaut mark
ì Small i, grave accent
í Small i, acute accent
î Small i, circumflex accent
ï Small i, dieresis or umlaut mark
ð Small eth, Icelandic
ñ Small n, tilde
ò Small o, grave accent
ó Small o, acute accent
ô Small o, circumflex accent
õ Small o, tilde
ö Small o, dieresis or umlaut mark
÷ Division sign
ø Small o, slash
ù Small u, grave accent
ú Small u, acute accent
û Small u, circumflex accent
ü Small u, dieresis or umlaut mark
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ý Small y, acute accent
þ Small thorn, Icelandic
ÿ Small y, dieresis or umlaut mark