This specification is like no other — it has been processed with you, the humble web developer, in mind.
The focus of this specification is readability and ease of access. Unlike the full HTML Standard, this "developer's edition" removes information that only browser vendors need know. It is automatically produced from the full specification by our build tooling, and thus always in sync with the latest developments in HTML.
To read about its conception, construction, and future, read the original press release, and the blog post about its relaunch.
Finally, feel free to contribute on GitHub to make this edition better for everyone!
This section only describes the rules for XML resources. Rules for
text/html resources are discussed in the section above entitled "The HTML
syntax".
The XML syntax for HTML was formerly referred to as "XHTML", but this specification does not use that term (among other reasons, because no such term is used for the HTML syntaxes of MathML and SVG).
The syntax for XML is defined in the XML and Namespaces in XML specifications. [XML] [XMLNS]
This specification does not define any syntax-level requirements beyond those defined for XML proper.
XML documents may contain a DOCTYPE if desired, but this is not required
to conform to this specification. This specification does not define a public or system
identifier, nor provide a formal DTD.
According to the XML specification, XML processors are not guaranteed to process
the external DTD subset referenced in the DOCTYPE. This means, for example, that using entity references for characters in XML documents
is unsafe if they are defined in an external file (except for <,
>, &, "
and ').