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Re: ISO-HTML

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From: Thomas Jedenfelt
Date: Jun 29, 2005 12:21AM

Hello Terence,

Thanks for your detailed reply.

Then, ISO HTML has not any accessibility advantages over W3C HTML 4 or XHTML.

The decisive drawbacks, for me, are:
1) Headings are not allowed in a DIV container;
2) Cell phones (always?, most often?) use XHTML.

Other drawbacks:
1) Few editors support ISO HTML;
2) No support for scripting.

I did not know that ISO HTML is a subset of HTML 4.01 Strict. I thought it was the other way around.

Regards,
Thomas Jedenfelt

(non-professional Web developer since 1997)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Terence de Giere"
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:13:55 -0400

>
> Thomas Jedenfelt < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote
>
> > Are there any accessibility advantages using the
> > ISO doctype, rather than e.g.
> > [W3C HTML 4.01 Strict] or
> > [W3C XHTML 1.0 Strict]?
>
>
> ISO HTML is an accessible document type, but depending on the
> software you are using to edit it, it might be difficult or
> impossible to use. Graphical editing software tends to add things
> that ISO HTML does not support. ISO HTML does not support
> scripting, for example. Many software packages will automatically
> add image sizing information when the page is loaded etc. ISO HTML
> works fine in an Standard Generalized Markup Language editor where
> you can load the Document Type Definition, but I am not sure it is
> really practical for most HTML editing programs. I have used ISO
> HTML. This international standard, edited by Roger Price and David
> Abrahamson represents a very conservative but very accessible
> subset of HTML 4.01 strict, and emphasizes the use of stable and
> mature features of HTML that have been around the longest.
>
> If you have the means to edit it efficiently by all means use it if
> it fits your requirements. But note many new kinds of devices, like
> cell phones that support web pages are using XHTML as their basic
> page language. The shift is toward the use of XML rather than SGML,
> and you can easily emulate the features of ISO HTML with HTML 4.01
> strict or XHTML 1.0 strict. Very few people seem to be using ISO
> HTML, probably because of the lack of easy-to-use-software for
> editing. You can validate ISO HTML using the W3C's HTML validator.
>
> If graphical sophistication is a requirement, the limitations of
> ISO HTML might be a hindrance. For example, one cannot place
> headings inside DIV elements, so some of the tricks for creating
> CSS format boxes to replace table format in other versions of HTML
> cannot be done with this version. ISO HTML is best for one-column,
> well-structured, documents such as an academic report. A one-column
> format is of course, the most accessible format.
>
> Terence de Giere


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