Terms

absolute URI

a URI in absolute form; for example, as per [URL]

anchor

one of two ends of a hyperlink; typically, a phrase marked as an A element.

base URI

an absolute URI used in combination with a relative URI to determine another absolute URI.

character

An atom of information, for example a letter or a digit. Graphic characters have associated glyphs, where as control characters have associated processing semantics.

character encoding scheme

A function whose domain is the set of sequences of octets, and whose range is the set of sequences of characters from a character repertoire; that is, a sequence of octets and a character encoding scheme determines a sequence of characters.

character repertoire

A finite set of characters; e.g. the range of a coded character set.

code position

An integer. A coded character set and a code position from its domain determine a character.

coded character set

A function whose domain is a subset of the integers and whose range is a character repertoire. That is, for some set of integers (usually of the form {0, 1, 2, ..., N} ), a coded character set and an integer in that set determine a character. Conversely, a character and a coded character set determine the character's code position (or, in rare cases, a few code positions).

conforming HTML user agent

A user agent that conforms to this specification in its processing of the Internet Media Type `text/html'.

data character

Characters other than markup, which make up the content of elements.

document character set

a coded character set whose range includes all characters used in a document. Every SGML document has exactly one document character set. Numeric character references are resolved via the document character set.

DTD

document type definition. Rules that apply SGML to the markup of documents of a particular type, including a set of element and entity declarations. [SGML]

element

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

end-tag

Descriptive markup that identifies the end of an element. [SGML]

entity

data with an associated notation or interpretation; for example, a sequence of octets associated with an Internet Media Type. [SGML]

fragment identifier

the portion of an HREF attribute value following the `#' character which modifies the presentation of the destination of a hyperlink.

form data set

a sequence of name/value pairs; the names are given by an HTML document and the values are given by a user.

HTML document

An SGML document conforming to this document type definition.

hyperlink

a relationship between two anchors, called the tail and the head.

markup

Syntactically delimited characters added to the data of a document to represent its structure. There are four different kinds of markup: descriptive markup (tags), references, markup declarations, and processing instructions. [SGML]

may

A document or user interface is conforming whether this statement applies or not.

media type

an Internet Media Type, as per [IMEDIA].

message entity

a head and body. The head is a collection of name/value fields, and the body is a sequence of octets. The head defines the content type and content transfer encoding of the body. [MIME]

minimally conforming HTML user agent

A user agent that conforms to this specification except for form processing. It may only process level 1 HTML documents.

must

Documents or user agents in conflict with this statement are not conforming.

numeric character reference

markup that refers to a character by its code position in the document character set.

SGML document

A sequence of characters organized physically as a set of entities and logically into a hierarchy of elements. An SGML document consists of data characters and markup; the markup describes the structure of the information and an instance of that structure. [SGML]

shall

If a document or user agent conflicts with this statement, it does not conform to this specification.

should

If a document or user agent conflicts with this statement, undesirable results may occur in practice even though it conforms to this specification.

start-tag

Descriptive markup that identifies the start of an element and specifies its generic identifier and attributes. [SGML]

syntax-reference character set

A coded character set whose range includes all characters used for markup; e.g. name characters and delimiter characters.

tag

Markup that delimits an element. A tag includes a name which refers to an element declaration in the DTD, and may include attributes. [SGML]

text entity

A finite sequence of characters. A text entity typically takes the form of a sequence of octets with some associated character encoding scheme, transmitted over the network or stored in a file. [SGML]

typical

Typical processing is described for many elements. This is not a mandatory part of the specification but is given as guidance for designers and to help explain the uses for which the elements were intended.

URI

A Uniform Resource Identifier is a formatted string that serves as an identifier for a resource, typically on the Internet. URIs are used in HTML to identify the anchors of hyperlinks. URIs in common practice include Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)[URL] and Relative URLs [RELURL].

user agent

A component of a distributed system that presents an interface and processes requests on behalf of a user; for example, a www browser or a mail user agent.

WWW

The World-Wide Web is a hypertext-based, distributed information system created by researchers at CERN in Switzerland. http://www.w3.org/