WWW HTML

HTML 2.0 CheckHTML 2.0 Materials

The HTML 2.0 specification RFC 1866, is a product of the HTML Working Group of the IETF, edited by Dan Connolly.

RFC 1866. Proposed Standard
"HyperText Markup Language Specification -- 2.0",
T. Berners-Lee and D. Connolly, November 1995.
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. 

Network Working Group                                    T. Berners-Lee
Request for Comments: 1866                                      MIT/W3C
Category: Standards Track                                   D. Connolly
                                                          November 1995

The published RFC is the same in content as the September 22 draft, which is available here in several formats:

For folks that want to play around with the SGML source: It uses a document type by Gary Houston called Snafu. His GF: General SGML Formatter package includes this DTD and a few others, and some nifty tools to build TeXinfo, RTF, etc. from SGML documents.

Background, history

HTML 2.0 Public Text
Current DTD, SGML Declaration, and other "SGML code"
SGML
stuff
Connolly's HTML Design Notebook
Getting kinda old by now.
"Character Set" Considered Harmful
A discussion of terminology related to coded character sets and character encoding schemes.
Aug 8 draft
Aug 4 draft
June 15 draft
May 6 internet draft: Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 (130423 bytes)
@@
For example, try this search for HTML in The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies.

See also:

Archives of the www-talk and www-html mailing lists
for details of the early development of HTML.
About the Web
which contains background and history of the web project.

This is a timeline of publication events for HTML:

Nov 1995
HTML 2.0 becomes IETF Proposed Standard
This is an effort to create a specification for interoperablility among implementations of HTML. See also: IETF HTML Working group (closed in 96).
March 1995: HTML 3.0 internet draft
"provides additional capabilities over previous versions such as tables, text flow around figures and math."
A review of the HTML+ document format
David Raggett
Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 27(2), pp. 135-145, November 1994.
(BibTeX)
PostScript, Size: 847238, Printed: 10 pages from Preliminary Proceedings at CERN
26 July 94 WWW IETF BOF Toronto
25 July 94 HTML-IG Toronto
HTML 2.0 July 1994 draft: Berners-Lee, Connolly, Muldrow
The HTML specification was rewritten for consistency and usability by Karen Muldrow at HaL over the summer of 1994. Dan Connolly presented the draft at the Toronto IETF meeting, where the HTML working group was formed.
1994 April: HTML test suite; Dan Connolly
The internet draft spec for HTML expired, and there has been a lot of noise about a new spec. I've collected a test suite of HTML documents and created a DTD to parse them (with a few minor tweaks.)

Included are DTD for HTML that reflects current practice, along with a whole mess of HTML files I got from various places to test it out. This stuff has not been prepared for distribution, but you can check out the Makefile for clues.

Toward Closure on HTML
1994/04/07
(see also the www-talk mailing list archive for responses)
An Essay on HTML
aka Toward a Formalism for Communication On the Web
1994/02/15
1993 November: HTML+ Discussion Document; Dave Raggett
Dave Ragget is working on a successor to HTML called HTML+. It is now supported by Bill Perry's w3 mode for emacs and by tkWWW. My comments on the HTML+ spec are under development.
1993 June: draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt Berners-Lee and Connolly 
 Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)          Tim Berners-Lee, CERN
 Internet Draft                          Daniel Connolly, Atrium
 IIIR Working Group                                    June 1993

This internet draft (now expired) was "sponsored" by the Integration of Internet Information Resources (IIIR) working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

19 Nov 93 WWW-TEI,Cork
World-Wide Web: The Information Universe
Berners-Lee, T., et al., (1992), Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy, Vol 1 No 2, Meckler, Westport CT, Spring 1992
1991
Tim Berners-Lee originally drafted this as a somewhat informal reference on the HTML elements. The document has been edited continuously since then, with snapshots published through various means.

Dan Connolly, HTML 2.0 editor
$Revision: 1.52 $ by $Author: connolly $ on $Date: 1999/09/28 22:29:40 $