> The HTML 2.0 spec does indeed say that but it _doesn't_ say that tools
> should or should not be able to _re_order META elements; to my mind this
> is a different thing.
I'm afraid it's seen as a direct consequence of the current spec.
[...]
> changing the order changes the parse tree and thus changes the document
> (and in the case of multi-line metadata, it can change the semantics as
> well).
No. If you have multi-line metadata, you can't use multiple META elements
to represent it in the "obvious" way, but must use a single meta element.
The semantics of HEAD do not include any ordering information, and hence
reordering does not change the semantics.
I agree that this is less than ideal. None the less, we're stuck with it
unless there is some new information to add, which I will gladly forward.
> [...] the current wording just
> seems ambiguous to me (and obviously others seeing as this discussion has
> rolled on for months now).
I think it's farier to say that most people on this list have not read
(and have had no reason to read) RFC1866 in detail. I don't think it's
ambiguous in this regard. The headers are unordered.
Lee
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