Web pages in German

**dallison** · 11-19-2003, 07:41 AM

Is there someone that could help me with this?

I use FrontPage to edit pages in languages other than English. On this German page, http://www.abacoproperty4sale.com/deutsch.html the first line in the source code is <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html4.0/loose.dtd">

I have no idea what the purpose of this line is, and was wondering if this line of code is necessary? If it is necessary, does the 'EN' refer to English, and should it be changed?

Thanks in advance,
Dave Allison

**minstrel** · 11-19-2003, 05:12 PM

Originally Posted by dallison

On this German page, the first line in the source code is <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html4.0/loose.dtd">

I have no idea what the purpose of this line is, and was wondering if this line of code is necessary? If it is necessary, does the 'EN' refer to English, and should it be changed?

It is helpful if not necessary to ensure that your pages are rendered correctly - the line identifies which version of HMTL specifications should be applied. The "EN" does indeed mean "English" but no it should NOT be changed - it refers to the language of the HTML, not to the language of the text on the page. For further information about this, see HTML Version Information.

On the other hand, you can also specifiy the language of the text on your page: see Language Information.

For instance, if characters from the Greek alphabet appear in the midst of English text:

<Q lang="en">Her super-powers were the result of
γ-radiation,</Q> he explained.</P>

a user agent (1) should try to render the English content in an appropriate manner (e.g., in its handling the quotation marks) and (2) must make a best attempt to render γ even though it is not an English character.

The code for German would be "de".

**dallison** · 11-19-2003, 05:30 PM

David,
Thanks for reply. It makes sense now.
Cheers from Brockville,
Dave :-)

**cooper** · 11-20-2003, 11:46 AM

Hi dallison,
Minstrel has it pretty much nailed, I just thought I'd put in my 2¢. I know that the W3C pages can be a bit too technical without a lot of why and how for the average human that requires reasons for these things.

So here is another helpful link about DocType declarations...

From the ALA site:
http://alistapart.com/articles/doctype/
and translated into German:
http://puredesign.ch/lounge/artikel/doctype.shtml

I hope that's helpful. I also recommend Jeffrey Zeldman's book to anyone.

**weegillis** · 11-22-2003, 03:19 PM

and if you missed this W3C page,

21 Document Type Definition

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