REC-html40-19980424 HTML 4.0 Specification W3C Recommendation, revised on 24-Apr-1998 This version: http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424 Latest version: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40 Previous version: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218 Editors: Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> Arnaud Le Hors <lehors@w3.org> Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org> Abstract This specification defines the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), version 4.0, the publishing language of the World Wide Web. In addition to the text, multimedia, and hyperlink features of the previous versions of HTML, HTML 4.0 supports more multimedia options, scripting languages, style sheets, better printing facilities, and documents that are more accessible to users with disabilities. HTML 4.0 also takes great strides towards the internationalization of documents, with the goal of making the Web truly World Wide. HTML 4.0 is an SGML application conforming to International Standard ISO 8879 -- Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO8879]. Status of this document This document has been reviewed by W3C Members and other interested parties and has been endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation. It is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited as a normative reference from another document. W3C's role in making the Recommendation is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This enhances the functionality and interoperability of the Web. W3C recommends that user agents and authors (and in particular, authoring tools) produce HTML 4.0 documents rather than HTML 3.2 documents (see [HTML32]). For reasons of backwards compatibility, W3C also recommends that tools interpreting HTML 4.0 continue to support HTML 3.2 and HTML 2.0 as well. A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR. Public discussion on HTML features takes place on www-html@w3.org. This document is a revised version of the document first released on 18 December 1997. Changes from the original version are only editorial in nature. Available formats The HTML 4.0 W3C Recommendation is also available in the following formats: A plain text file: http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/html40.txt (735Kb), A gzip'ed tar file containing HTML documents: http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/html40.tgz (357Kb), A zip file containing HTML documents (this is a '.zip' file not an '.exe'): http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/html40.zip (389Kb), A gzip'ed Postscript file: http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/html40.ps.gz (600Kb, 367 pages), A PDF file: http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/html40.pdf (2.1Mb) file. In case of a discrepancy between electronic and printed forms of the specification, the electronic version is the definitive version. Available languages The English version of this specification is the only normative version. However, for translations of this document, see http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html40-updates/translations.html. Errata The list of known errors in this specification is available at: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html40-updates/REC-html40-19980424-errata.html Please report errors in this document to www-html-editor@w3.org. Table of Contents 1. About the HTML 4.0 Specification 1. How the specification is organized 2. Document conventions 1. Elements and attributes 2. Notes and examples 3. Acknowledgments 4. Copyright Notice 2. Introduction to HTML 4.0 1. What is the World Wide Web? 1. Introduction to URIs 2. Fragment identifiers 3. Relative URIs 2. What is HTML? 1. A brief history of HTML 3. HTML 4.0 1. Internationalization 2. Accessibility 3. Tables 4. Compound documents 5. Style sheets 6. Scripting 7. Printing 4. Authoring documents with HTML 4.0 1. Separate structure and presentation 2. Consider universal accessibility to the Web 3. Help user agents with incremental rendering 3. On SGML and HTML 1. Introduction to SGML 2. SGML constructs used in HTML 1. Elements 2. Attributes 3. Character references 4. Comments 3. How to read the HTML DTD 1. DTD Comments 2. Parameter entity definitions 3. Element declarations + Content model definitions 4. Attribute declarations + DTD entities in attribute definitions + Boolean attributes 4. Conformance: requirements and recommendations 1. Definitions 2. SGML 3. The text/html content type 5. HTML Document Representation - Character sets, character encodings, and entities 1. The Document Character Set 2. Character encodings 1. Choosing an encoding + Notes on specific encodings 2. Specifying the character encoding 3. Character references 1. Numeric character references 2. Character entity references 4. Undisplayable characters 6. Basic HTML data types - Character data, colors, lengths, URIs, content types, etc. 1. Case information 2. SGML basic types 3. Text strings 4. URIs 5. Colors 1. Notes on using colors 6. Lengths 7. Content types (MIME types) 8. Language codes 9. Character encodings 10. Single characters 11. Dates and times 12. Link types 13. Media descriptors 14. Script data 15. Style sheet data 16. Frame target names 7. The global structure of an HTML document - The HEAD and BODY of a document 1. Introduction to the structure of an HTML document 2. HTML version information 3. The HTML element 4. The document head 1. The HEAD element 2. The TITLE element 3. The title attribute 4. Meta data + Specifying meta data + The META element + Meta data profiles 5. The document body 1. The BODY element 2. Element identifiers: the id and class attributes 3. Block-level and inline elements 4. Grouping elements: the DIV and SPAN elements 5. Headings: The H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 elements 6. The ADDRESS element 8. Language information and text direction - International considerations for text 1. Specifying the language of content: the lang attribute 1. Language codes 2. Inheritance of language codes 3. Interpretation of language codes 2. Specifying the direction of text and tables: the dir attribute 1. Introduction to the bidirectional algorithm 2. Inheritance of text direction information 3. Setting the direction of embedded text 4. Overriding the bidirectional algorithm: the BDO element 5. Character references for directionality and joining control 6. The effect of style sheets on bidirectionality 9. Text - Paragraphs, Lines, and Phrases 1. White space 2. Structured text 1. Phrase elements: EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ABBR, and ACRONYM 2. Quotations: The BLOCKQUOTE and Q elements + Rendering quotations 3. Subscripts and superscripts: the SUB and SUP elements 3. Lines and Paragraphs 1. Paragraphs: the P element 2. Controlling line breaks + Forcing a line break: the BR element + Prohibiting a line break 3. Hyphenation 4. Preformatted text: The PRE element 5. Visual rendering of paragraphs 4. Marking document changes: The INS and DEL elements 10. Lists - Unordered, Ordered, and Definition Lists 1. Introduction to lists 2. Unordered lists (UL), ordered lists (OL), and list items (LI) 3. Definition lists: the DL, DT, and DD elements 1. Visual rendering of lists 4. The DIR and MENU elements 11. Tables 1. Introduction to tables 2. Elements for constructing tables 1. The TABLE element + Table directionality 2. Table Captions: The CAPTION element 3. Row groups: the THEAD, TFOOT, and TBODY elements 4. Column groups: the COLGROUP and COL elements + The COLGROUP element + The COL element + Calculating the number of columns in a table + Calculating the width of columns 5. Table rows: The TR element 6. Table cells: The TH and TD elements + Cells that span several rows or columns 3. Table formatting by visual user agents 1. Borders and rules 2. Horizontal and vertical alignment + Inheritance of alignment specifications 3. Cell margins 4. Table rendering by non-visual user agents 1. Associating header information with data cells 2. Categorizing cells 3. Algorithm to find heading information 5. Sample table 12. Links - Hypertext and Media-Independent Links 1. Introduction to links and anchors 1. Visiting a linked resource 2. Other link relationships 3. Specifying anchors and links 4. Link titles ...
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