HTML has been in use by the World-Wide Web (WWW) global information initiative since 1990. Previously, informal documentation on HTML has been available from a number of sources on the Internet. This specification brings together, clarifies, and formalizes a set of features that roughly corresponds to the capabilities of HTML in common use prior to June 1994. A number of new features to HTML are being proposed and experimented in the Internet community.
This document thus defines a HTML 2.0 (to distinguish it from the previous informal specifications). Future (generally upwardly compatible) versions of HTML with new features will be released with higher version numbers.
HTML is an application of ISO Standard 8879:1986, "Information Processing Text and Office Systems; Standard Generalized Markup Language" (SGML). The HTML Document Type Definition (DTD) is a formal definition of the HTML syntax in terms of SGML.
This specification also defines HTML as an Internet Media Type[IMEDIA] and MIME Content Type[MIME] called `text/html'. As such, it defines the semantics of the HTML syntax and how that syntax should be interpreted by user agents.