HTML comments in OmniWeb 2.0

[Ken Case]

Quoting from the HTML 2.0 spec at  
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_3.html#SEC3.2.5:  
 "In a comment declaration, white space is allowed after each  
comment, but not before the first comment."  In other words, <!  
--This is not a comment-->.  <!--This is.-->  Note that nothing  
other than comments are allowed between "<!" and ">" if it's to be  
considered a comment declaration:  in other words, as the last  
example in the spec says, <!- not a comment, just regular old data  
characters -> (data characters being the stuff we're supposed to  
display).

However, many browsers not written according to this spec (which is  
fairly recent) still mistakenly interpret <! This> as a comment,  
and don't display them.  Since people seem to expect that (and  
nobody relies on the other, "correct," behavior), we'll treat <!  
This> as a comment (at least, as a preference) in our next beta  
release.

Anyway, that's why OmniWeb 2.0 beta 1 displays the <! ------------>  
"comments" on pages like 3DO's (we followed the spec).  Beta 2  
won't.

				Sigh,
				Ken