🚀 go-pugleaf

On Friday, in article <846807613snz@wash.demon.co.uk>
     john@wash.demon.co.uk "John Washington" wrote:

JW> RH>         <!source: www.someware..com/path/filename.html>
JW>
JW> Yes, I think something like this would be good.  Someone
JW> just as picky as I am but more knowledgeable will
JW> perhaps be along shortly to tell us that isn't legal
JW> HTML comment.  

Dunno about more knowledgeable; but I just checked RFC 1866
and the very handy HTMLview.

JW> I'm also uncertain whether it's
JW> legal to have it at the start of the doc, even before
JW> the <html> tag, however, for simplicity I'd probably
JW> do it that way anyhow.

JW> Pragmatically, I suspect most browsers won't care.

Indeed, most browsers continue to smile when whacked on the head
with a big stick; when I see the HTML they often have to render,
I see why.  However, this may be an exception.

---------------HTMLview--------------------
  <!-- comment body -->
  Inserts a comment into the document. Must not contain any tags nested
  <! This is a comment >
  within it. Comments do not affect the flow of text.

  Earlier versions of mosaic will recognise the following as a comment.
  <! comment body >
-------------------------------------------

---------------- RFC 1866 -----------------

  3.2.5. Comments

     To include comments in an HTML document, use a comment declaration. A
     comment declaration consists of `<!' followed by zero or more
     comments followed by `>'. Each comment starts with `--' and includes
     all text up to and including the next occurrence of `--'. In a
     comment declaration, white space is allowed after each comment, but
     not before the first comment.  The entire comment declaration is
     ignored.

        NOTE - Some historical HTML implementations incorrectly consider
        any `>' character to be the termination of a comment.

--------------------------------------------

So it seems that this may well be a case where care is needed.
My interpretation of the above is that this is safe:

<!-- source: www.someware..com/path/filename.html -->

But that these aren't:

<!-- source: <http://www.someware..com/path/filename.html> -->
(some browsers broken by < and > within the tag)

<!-- source: www.two--dashes.com/path/file.html -->
(broken by two dashes in the URL, which the RFC implies
is sufficient to terminate a comment; though maybe I'm
reading it wrong)

-- 
/ P. McNab  // philip@siberia.demon.co.uk /