Why HTML5 is Not Based on SGML

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• published: 07 Jul 2014
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Do you know why HTML5 is not based on SGML? SGML and HTML5 syntax are similar. However, HTML5 doesn't require a reference to a DTD. Then why would I hear that HTML5 was based on it. HTML4 is based on SGML and XHTML. And HTML5 is the next generation of HTML, AKA the replacement for HTML4. So SGML is an influence. HTML doesn't have a serialization standard anymore. Anymore? So that went away with HTML5. I'd have to read about the history of HTML to find out when that went away. About the only thing more boring than coding standards is their history. At least the show Silicon Valley makes the history of computers interesting, in a soap opera way. HTML had an SGML serialization. It also had an XML serialization, and that was called XHTML 1.0. XHTML is in version 2.0 in the least. HTML does specify two serializations, the two I just mentioned. But HTML5 doesn't have a specific serialization, so it doesn't even have to use SGML's anymore. I wonder where the belief came from. In HTML4, the doctype declaration referred to a DTD. That comes from SGML. But the Doctype declaration is not an HTML tag but an instruction to the browser about what HTML version the web page is written in. What's the difference? You need to use doctype to your HTML documents so the browser renders it correctly, regardless of the HTML version it is in. So I need to use the SGML based Doctype even for HTML5 web pages. And Doctype declarations refer to a DTD, even though the rest of the HTML has only a vague resemblance to SGML. But if I don't have that reference, the browser could screw things up. Yeah, it'll just render all the content as plain text regardless of the pretty little CSS file you have for a blog template.