Re: Adding new tags (was: Redefining...)

timbl@www3.cern.ch wrote:
[Re: <RENDER> and new elements]
> So are we assuming full DTD parsing is mandatory for all HTML+
> clients of 3.0+?  If so, you are getting quite bogged down in SGML

This is a good point.  

If HTML+ allows new elements to be declared in the
internal DTD subset, then browsers will pretty much
have to incorporate a full SGML parser.  

Also, the current proposed mechanism for defining new
elements (the "?extra" parameter entities) requires that 
all browsers are based on the same DTD -- a goal worth 
working for, to be sure, but not likely to be realized
any time soon IMHO.

Architectural forms would be much simpler to handle.
Good candidates for these are:

	<P> for paragraph-like elements,
	<EM> for phrase-level elements,
	<A> for hyperlinks,
	<OL> and/or <UL> for single part lists,
	<DL> for defining lists
	??? for containers / divisions (logical subunits of a document)
	??? for titles / heading-like elements (which associate a
	    name with a container element)
	??? Others? 

Each of these elements could have a "ROLE=" attribute,
specifying a (user-defined) semantic role.  The <RENDER> 
element would associate presentation styles with role
names, rather than element names; then users could
encode whatever styles and semantics they wanted,
and browsers would still only need to recognize a fixed 
set of elements.

<p role=imho>
I like the name <em role=attname>ROLE</em> 
better than <em role=attname>STYLE</em>,
since presumably this attribute conveys more than 
just presentation information.
I remember seeing this attribute on the 
<em role=elname>EM</em> element at one point; don't know
what happened to it.
</p>


--Joe English

  jenglish@crl.com

Received on Monday, 13 June 1994 21:05:18 UTC