It appears that the decision to remove the META element was made
without looking at all the evidence. I'll have to stick it back in
somewhere.
Somebody needs to come up with:
1. Edits to the spec to completely describe current practice
w.r.t the META element.
2. Several test cases showing good and bad usage of META
(including errors, etc.) for inclusion in the test suite that
accompanies the 2.0 document.
If this task is left to me, it will happen slowly, if at all.
You seem to be intimately familiar with the subtleties of the META
element. You are invited to write up the specification and submit test
cases.
Dan