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HTML 2.0 Specification (Internet Draft)

7. Glossary


The HTML specification uses these words with precise meanings:

attribute
A syntactical component of an HTML element which is often used to specify a characteristic quality of an element, other than type or content.

document type definition (DTD)
A DTD is a collection of declarations (entity, element, attribute, link, map, etc.) in SGML syntax that defines the components and structures available for a class (type) of documents.

element
A component of the hierarchical structure defined by the document type definition; it is identified in a document instance by descriptive markup, usually a start-tag and an end-tag.

HTML
HyperText Markup Language.

HTML user agent
Any tool used with HTML documents.

HTML document
A collection of information represented as a sequence of characters. An HTML document consists of data characters and markup. In particular, the markup describes a structure conforming to the HTML document type definition.

HTTP
A generic stateless object-oriented protocol, which may be used for many similar tasks by extending the commands, or "methods", used. For example, you might use HTTP for name servers and distributed object-oriented systems, With HTTP, the negotiation of data representation allows systems to be built independent of the development of new representations. For more information see: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Protocols/HTTP/HTTP2.html

(document) instance
The document itself including the actual content with the actual markup. Can be a single document or part of a document instance set that follows the DTD.

markup
Text added to the data of a document to convey information about it. There are four different kinds of markup: descriptive markup (tags), references, markup declarations, and processing instructions.

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
An extension to Internet email which provides the ability to transfer non-textual data, such as graphics, audio and fax. It is defined in RFC 1341.

representation
The encoding of information for interchange. For example, HTML is a representation of hypertext.

rendering
Formatting and presenting information.

SGML
Standard Generalized Markup Language is a data encoding that allows the information in documents to be shared -- either by other document publishing systems or by applications for electronic delivery, configuration management, database management, inventory control, etc. Defined in ISO 8879:1986 Information Processing Text and Office Systems; Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

SGMLS
An SGML parser by James Clark, jjc@jclark.com, derived from the ARCSGML parser materials which were written by Charles F. Goldfarb. The source is available at ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/SGML/SGMLS.

tag
Descriptive markup. There are two kinds of tags; start-tags and end-tags.

URI
Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) is the name for a generic WWW identifier. The URI specification simply defines the syntax for encoding arbitrary naming or addressing schemes, and has a list of such schemes. See also: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Addressing/Addressing.html

WWW
A hypertext-based, distributed information system created by researchers at CERN in Switzerland. Users may create, edit or browse hypertext documents. The clients and servers are freely available.See also: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

7.1 - Imperatives

HTML 2.0 Specification (Internet Draft) - 29 NOV 94
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