Re: INCLUDE tag

Brian Behlendorf (brian@organic.com)
Tue, 2 May 1995 13:45:00 -0700 (PDT) 

Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 13:45:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Behlendorf <brian@organic.com>
Subject: Re: INCLUDE tag
To: Martian <abigail@mars.ic.iaf.nl>
Cc: Multiple recipients of list <www-html@www10.w3.org>
In-Reply-To: <m0s5Oa0-0002EZC@mars.ic.iaf.nl>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.89.9505021349.N27478-0100000@eat.organic.com>

On Sat, 29 Apr 1995, Martian wrote:
> Once upon a time you, Ian Higgs +44 171 510 8595, wrote:
> ++ 
> ++ What I wanted to see is the contents of the object as it would be 
> ++ displayed if I had asked for it directly. If the object is HTML
> ++ then it should be parsed in context just like #include for C code.
> ++ 
> ++ JE] SGML has a mechanism for doing this, namely entity references:
> ++ 
> ++ Perfect! (NETSCAPE: Netscape 1.1 b4 please ...)
> 
> In my opinion, there is no reason to have an <include> tag in html,
> where the <include> includes another file, combining both files to
> one html file. That will only lead to more network traffic and longer
> display times (since 2 requests have to be made.) 

Unless of course the file is already there in the cache... 

There are a few
> alternatives:
> 1) Read the manual of your editor and learn how to use macros.

Yes, ccp and #include are useful for now, but not a long term  
solution.  What if I want to include objects from other sites that don't 
necessarily have control over or are updated frequently?  Or I don't want 
to recreate a tree of 100,000 documents simply because I've fixed a 
typo on the copyright message?

> 2) Use server-side includes. Though that has the disadvantages of
>    fooling proxies and caches.

Not "fool", "break".  

> 3) Use something like m4 macros to generate the files, including the
>    included fragments.

See 1.

> 4) Use <a>.

Exactly how it was originally supposed to work: <A REL="embed" 
HREF="copyright.html">.  And then along came <IMG> and the rest is history.
But I think you were suggesting something like 

<a href="/copyright.html">Copyright</a> 

which isn't quite there either.

	Brian

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