Re: Draft Minutes of HTTP Working Group, 33rd IETF Meeting, Stockholm

Martin Hamilton <martin@mrrl.lut.ac.uk> Writes:
 
> Are there any plans to further develop the existing HTML & HTTP 
> "HEAD" mechanisms for passing meta-information ?  Methinks it would 
> be good to have something along the lines of the "Dublin Core" 
> element set [1] in there.  Who knows, this approach might just make 
> URCs redundant! :-)

Yes there are ! But not exactly on those lines; as HEAD is the header
of the HTML document (and intended to make the RENDERING more usefull)
I am very strongly in favour (and have implemented) a new META tag.

To return to an earlier discussion; people wanted to have meta data
in the head, mainly because it was easy to enter there in some kind
of simple HTML. but were quite concerned that the meta data would
break/show up in excisting clients. A problem further augmented by
the fact that the default for 'new' tags is 'show' for the browser.

Therefore I use a new META mechanism, *but* the actual information
is simply in the normal <head>..</head> section, as a <meta>..</meta>
sectoin... but this is stripped out when there is a GET. POST or HEAD
request. This allows easy editing/adding with excisting editors/tools.

The 'meta' output format depents on the Accept-type negotiation, and currently
only support urc0, Aliweb, html and some SGML+DTD format.

The above are more or less 'carrier' formats; I try to adhere to the
dublin-core article and the aliweb RFC for the information I encode
and there conceptual meaning.
 
Dw.

Received on Friday, 11 August 1995 12:24:00 UTC