Re: proposal for a new html tag

On Mon, 20 Mar 1995, Siegmann P wrote:

> Name of the tag : <LP> and its </LP> counterpart
> Mnemonics       : Lower Priority
> What does it do : This new tag is an attempt at giving the author of an html 
> 	document the possibilty to give a relative priority to different parts 
> 	of his document.
> 
> Why it is needed:
> It often happens that someone wants to view 
> http://www.foo.bar/obnoxiouslylongdocument.html,
> or wants to view a document of a shorter size, but has a very slow connection.
> What usually happens is that the person accessing the document reads the first 
> screenful of text, and bases his decision to wait for the rest of the 
> document, or to break the transfer all together on that first screenfull.
> So the writer of a long html-document, or a document with a lot of images has 
> to make the first screenfull attractive enough in order to have his entire 
> document read.
> This is in sharp contrast with the idea of structured documents.
> 
> My proposed solution to this problem is the following:
> Order the different parts of the document according to their relative 
> importance, with the use of the proposed <LP> tag.
> This tag lowers the priority of the enclosed block, and can be nested, to 
> lower the priority of some parts of the document even more.
> 
> For example:
> Here is a document describing a better mousetrap, and I, as the author, think 
> that the reader should at least have read all my headers and the abstract.
> The text between the headers is considered less important.
> And as formal proofs are so impopular, the proof that my mousetrap really 
> works has an even lower priority. 
> 
> <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Mousetrap</TITLE></HEAD>
> <BODY><H1>My better mousetrap</H1>
> <BLOCKQUOTE>
> <H2>Abstract</H2>
> This is a proposal for a better mousetrap
> </BLOCKQUOTE>
> <H2>Introduction</H2>
> <LP>                 <!-- HERE the priority is lowered-->
> This is an idea that
> blahblahblahblah
> </LP>                <!-- HERE the priority is raised again-->
> <H2>How it works</H2>
> <LP>                 <!-- HERE the priority is lowered-->
> It works like this....
> <LP>                 <!-- HERE the priority is lowered even more-->
> <H3>The formal proof</H3>
> And this is the formal proof that it really works:
> ....
> </LP>                <!-- HERE the priority is raised to the level of -1 -->
> Lo and behold, it works.
> </LP>                <!-- HERE the priority is raised to the begin level-->
> <ADDDRESS><A HREF="mailto:psiegma@cs.vu.nl">Paul Siegmann</A></ADDRESS>
> </BODY></HTML>
> 
> Now the viewer, or the person viewing the document could have several options:
>  - Fast network connection:
> 	Ignore the priorities.
>  - Medium network connection/curious person
> 	First load all the document parts with the highest priority, and 
> 	automatically continue loading the rest of the document in order of 
> 	priority.
>  - Slow network/modem connection:
> 	Only show the parts with the highest priority, and only show parts 
> 	with a lower priority if they are clicked on (like with delayed image 
> 	loading)
> 
> All comments and suggestions welcome.

Paul...

I suspect that this message would be best dealt with on the HTML mailing 
list - anyone have the address handy ?

As regards your tag, I would have my doubts about the partition of documents 
based on the speed of network connections --- I reckon that the encoding 
of a document should be as independent as possible of its storage and its 
transmission. Maybe if you had some other rationale for the 
partitioning of documents....

Besides, I think authoring is such a problem in W3 already, that 
allowing 3 sub-documents within one document is only going 
to mean messier documents and much increased workloads for document 
authors and maintainers.

What about a special summary tag ?
Doesn't the latest version of HTML have provision for this sort of thing ?


Liam
--
 Liam Relihan,                                        Voice: +353-61-202713
 CSIS, Schumann Building,        [space]                Fax: +353-61-330876
 University Of Limerick,                             E-mail: relihanl@ul.ie
 Ireland.                      http://itdsrv1.ul.ie/PERSONNEL/lrelihan.html

Received on Monday, 20 March 1995 06:18:31 UTC