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'HTML20') (Obsoleted by RFC 2854) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 1867 (ref. 'UPLOAD') (Obsoleted by RFC 2854) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 1942 (ref. 'TABLES') (Obsoleted by RFC 2854) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 1980 (ref. 'CLIMAPS') (Obsoleted by RFC 2854) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 2070 (ref. 'I18N') (Obsoleted by RFC 2854) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 2388 (ref. 'FORMDATA') (Obsoleted by RFC 7578) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 2396 (ref. 'URI') (Obsoleted by RFC 3986) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 2616 (ref. 'HTTP') (Obsoleted by RFC 7230, RFC 7231, RFC 7232, RFC 7233, RFC 7234, RFC 7235) Summary: 15 errors (**), 0 flaws (~~), 3 warnings (==), 6 comments (--). Run idnits with the --verbose option for more detailed information about the items above. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Internet-Draft D. Connolly 2 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) 3 Category: Informational L. Masinter 4 Xerox Corporation 5 draft-connolly-text-html-01.txt October 13, 1999 6 Obsoletes: RFC 1866, RFC 2070, RFC 1980, RFC 1867, RFC 1942 8 The 'text/html' Media Type 10 Status of this Memo 12 This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with 13 all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026. 15 This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working 16 documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, 17 and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute 18 working documents as Internet-Drafts. 20 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six 21 months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other 22 documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts 23 as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in 24 progress''. 26 The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at 27 http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt 29 The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at 30 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. 32 Copyright Notice 34 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999). All Rights Reserved. 36 Abstract 38 This document summarizes the history of HTML development, and 39 defines the "text/html" MIME type by pointing to the relevant W3C 40 recommendations; it is intended to obsolete the previous IETF 41 documents defining HTML, including RFC 1866, RFC 1867, RFC 1980, 42 RFC 1942 and RFC 2070, and to remove HTML from IETF Standards 43 Track. 45 This document was prepared at the request of the W3C HTML working 46 group. Please send comments to www-html@w3.org, a public mailing 47 list with archive at 48 . 50 1. Introduction and background 52 HTML has been in use in the World Wide Web information 53 infrastructure since 1990, and specified in various informal 54 documents. The text/html media type was first officially defined 55 by the IETF HTML working group in 1995 in [HTML20]. Extensions to 56 HTML were proposed in [HTML30], [UPLOAD], [TABLES], [CLIMAPS], and 57 [I18N]. 59 The HTML working group closed Sep 1996, and work on defining HTML 60 moved to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The proposed 61 extensions were incorporated to some extent in [HTML32], and to a 62 larger extent in [HTML40]. The definition of multipart/form-data 63 from [UPLOAD] was described in [FORMDATA]. In addition, a 64 reformulation of HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0 is being developed [XHTML1]. 66 [HTML32] notes "This specification defines HTML version 3.2. HTML 67 3.2 aims to capture recommended practice as of early '96 and as 68 such to be used as a replacement for HTML 2.0 (RFC 1866)." 69 Subsequent specifications for HTML describe the differences in each 70 version. 72 In addition to the development of standards, a wide variety of 73 additional extensions, restrictions, and modifications to HTML were 74 popularized by NCSA's Mosaic system and subsequently by the 75 competitive implementations of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft 76 Internet Explorer; these extensions are documented in numerous 77 books and online guides. 79 2. Registration of MIME media type text/html 81 MIME media type name: text 82 MIME subtype name: html 83 Required parameters: none 84 Optional parameters: 86 charset 87 The optional parameter "charset" refers to the character 88 encoding used to represent the HTML document as a sequence of 89 bytes. Any registered IANA charset may be used, but UTF-8 is 90 preferred. Although this parameter is optional, it is strongly 91 recommended that it always be present. See Section 6 below 92 for a discussion of charset default rules. 94 Note that [HTML20] included an optional "level" parameter; in 95 practice, this parameter was never used and has been removed from 96 this specification. [HTML30] also suggested a "version" 97 parameter; in practice, this parameter also was never used and 98 has been removed from this specification. 100 Encoding considerations: 101 See Section 4 of this document. 103 Security considerations: 104 See Section 7 of this document. 106 Interoperability considerations: 107 HTML is designed to be interoperable across the widest possible 108 range of platforms and devices of varying capabilities. However, 109 there are contexts (platforms of limited display capability, for 110 example) where not all of the capabilities of the full HTML 111 definition are feasible. There is ongoing work to develop both a 112 modularization of HTML and a set of profiling capabilities to 113 identify and negotiate restricted (and extended) capabilities. 115 Due to the long and distributed development of HTML, current 116 practice on the Internet includes a wide variety of HTML 117 variants. Implementors of text/html interpreters must be prepared 118 to be "bug-compatible" with popular browsers in order to work 119 with many HTML documents available the Internet. 121 Typically, different versions are distinguishable by the DOCTYPE 122 declaration contained within them, although the DOCTYPE 123 declaration itself is sometimes omitted or incorrect. 125 Published specification: 126 The text/html media type is now defined by W3C Recommendations; 127 the latest published version is [HTML40]. As of this writing, a 128 revision, HTML 4.01 [HTML401], is being developed as a revision. 129 In addition, [XHTML1], also a work in progress, defines a profile 130 of use of XHTML which is compatible with HTML 4.0 and which may 131 also be labeled as text/html. 133 Applications which use this media type: 134 The first and most common application of HTML is the World Wide 135 Web; commonly, HTML documents contain URI references [URI] to 136 other documents and media to be retrieved using the HTTP protocol 137 [HTTP]. Many gateway applications provide HTML-based interfaces 138 to other underlying complex services. Numerous other applications 139 now also use HTML as a convenient platform-independent multimedia 140 document representation. 142 Additional information: 144 Magic number: 145 There is no single initial string that is always present for 146 HTML files. However, Section 5 below gives some guidelines 147 for recognizing HTML files. 149 File extension: 150 The file extensions 'html' or 'htm' are commonly used, but 151 other extensions denoting file formats for preprocessing are 152 also common. 154 Macintosh File Type code: HTML 156 Person & email address to contact for further information: 157 Dan Connolly 158 Larry Masinter 160 Intended usage: COMMON 162 Author/Change controller: 163 The HTML specification is a work product of the World Wide Web 164 Consortium's HTML Working Group. The W3C has change control over 165 the HTML specification. 167 Further information: 168 HTML has a means of including, by reference via URI, additional 169 resources (image, video clip, applet) within the base 170 document. In order to transfer a complete HTML object and the 171 included resources in a single MIME object, the mechanisms of 172 [MHTML] may be used. 174 3. Fragment Identifiers 176 The URI specification [URI] notes that the semantics of a fragment 177 identifier (part of a URI after a "#") is a property of the data 178 resulting from a retrieval action, and that the format and 179 interpretation of fragment identifiers is dependent on the media 180 type of the retrieval result. 182 For documents labeled as text/html, the fragment identifier 183 designates the correspondingly named A element (named with a "name" 184 attribute), or any other element (named with the an "id" 185 attribute); this is described in detail in [HTML40] section 12. 187 4. Encoding considerations 189 Because of the availability within HTML itself for using character 190 entity references for non-ASCII characters, it is possible that 191 text/html documents with a wide repertoire of characters may be 192 transported without encoding. However, transport of text/html using 193 a charset other than US-ASCII may require base64 or 194 quoted-printable encoding for 7-bit channels. 196 The canonical form of any MIME "text" subtype MUST always represent 197 a line break as a CRLF sequence. Similarly, any occurrence of CRLF 198 in MIME "text" MUST represent a line break. Use of CR and LF 199 outside of line break sequences is also forbidden. This rule 200 applies regardless of format or character set or sets involved. 202 Note, however, that HTTP allows the transport of data not in 203 canonical form, and, in particular, with other end-of-line 204 conventions; see [HTTP] section 3.7.1. This exception is commonly 205 used for HTML. 207 HTML sent via email is still subject to the MIME restrictions; this 208 is discussed fully in [MHTML] Section 10. 210 5. Recognizing HTML files 212 Almost all HTML files have the string ". 274 [HTML20] "Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0." T. Berners-Lee & 275 D. Connolly. RFC 1866. November 1995. Additional information 276 available at . 278 [UPLOAD] "Form-based File Upload in HTML." E. Nebel & L. Masinter. RFC 279 1867. November 1995. 281 [TABLES] "HTML Tables." D. Raggett. RFC 1942. May 1996. 283 [CLIMAPS] "A Proposed Extension to HTML : Client-Side Image Maps." 284 J. Seidman. RFC 1980. August 1996. 286 [MIME] "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media 287 Types." N. Freed & N. Borenstein. November 1996. RFC 2046. 289 [HTML32] "HTML 3.2 Reference Specification." Dave Raggett. W3C 290 Recomendation. 14 January 1997. Available at 291 . 293 [I18N] "Internationalization of the Hypertext Markup Language." RFC 294 2070. F. Yergeau, G. Nicol, G. Adams, M. Duerst. January 295 1997. 297 [FORMDATA] "Returning Values from Forms: multipart/form-data". RFC 298 2388. L. Masinter. August 1998. 300 [HTML40] "HTML 4.0 Specification." Raggett, Le Hors, Jacobs. W3C 301 Recommendation. 18 Dec 1997. Available at 302 . 304 [HTML401] "HTML 4.01 Specification." D. Raggett, A. Le Hors, 305 I. Jacobs. W3C Proposed Recommendation (work in progress), 306 August 1999. Available at 307 . 309 [XHTML1] "XHTML 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language: A 310 Reformulation of HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0." W3C HTML Working 311 Group. W3C Proposed Recommendation (work in progress). August 312 1999. Available at . 314 [MHTML] "MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as 315 HTML (MHTML)". J. Palme, A. Hopmann, N. Shelness. 316 March 1999. RFC 2557. 318 [URI] "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax." 319 T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L. Masinter. August 1998, 320 RFC 2396. 322 [HTTP] "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1." R. Fielding, 323 J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk, L. Masinter, P. Leach, 324 T. Berners-Lee. June 1999.RFC 2616.