Back in the 90s browsers didn't implement standards, it was the other way around and standards were written based on what browsers already did. So HTML 3.2 was basically "what Netscape does" and even hints that way in the document...

I still wanted to write against a standard so I chose 3.2 which is basically Netscape 1.1 and up (1.1 lacks some color attributes, Netscape 2.0+ implements full HTML 3.2).