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Re: ISO-HTML

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From: Thomas Jedenfelt
Date: Jun 27, 2005 11:40AM

Are there any accessibility advantages using the ISO doctype, rather than e.g. [W3C HTML 4.01 Strict] or [W3C XHTML 1.0 Strict]?

Thanks to James for the summary of the ISO/IEC 15445:2000 DTD.

Regards,
Thomas Jedenfelt


----- Original Message -----
From: "James Pickering"
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 19:52:06 -0700

>
> The ISO -- International Organization for Standardization --
> consists of the national standards institutes of 151 countries, on
> the basis of one member per country, with a Central Secretariat in
> Geneva, Switzerland. It promulgates, develops and maintains world
> wide technical standards.
>
> Note that the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) only makes
> recommendations -- it is the ISO that publishes standards.
>
> The International standard for HTML is prescribed by the Document
> https://www.cs.tcd.ie/15445/15445.html and the Users Guide for
> ISO/IEC 15445:2000 (ISO-HTML) is at
> https://www.cs.tcd.ie/15445/UG.HTML
>
> Features of ISO-HTML .....
>
> 1. The hierarchy of the header elements (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 H6) is
> rigidly enforced. For example, H2 is not allowed to precede H1 at
> any place in a document.
>
> 2. HEIGHT and WIDTH parameters for IMG must be designated in style sheets.
>
> 3. Numerous W3C HTML 4.01 elements are refined in ISO-HTML.
>
> 4. Numerous W3C HTML 4.01 attributes are omitted from the standard
> or their use is restricted as outlined in the following quote from
> the Users Guide ..... "The W3C Recommendation for HTML 4.01
> provides a number of attributes that are not supported by the
> International Standard. They have been omitted because they are
> used to describe appearance rather than structure, or because the
> feature is considered to be still too unstable or immature for an
> International Standard."
>
> 5. The Standard separates content from presentation as delineated
> in the following quote from the Users Guide ....... "The
> International Standard is based on the well established principle
> that it is good document design to separate the content of a
> document from the intended style in which it is to be presented to
> a reader ..... "
>
> 6. The methodology for accomplishing presentation is outlined in
> the following quote from the Users Guide ..... "Although the
> International Standard does not specify a style sheet language,
> this User's Guide recommends that authors of ISO-HTML documents use
> Cascading Style Sheets as specified by the World Wide Web
> Consortium."
>
> 7. Style sheets must be linked -- embedded style constructs are not allowed.
>
> James Pickering
> Pickering Pages
> http://www.jp29.org/

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