Re: HTML is declarative on purpose [was: Web neurons ]

This is true, of course.  Any information that is bound
at run time requires an application be "run".  But
this is also an issue close to the heart of what I
suggest is going on:  people need to define 
executable applications, and some want to do it
in the context of a document-centric system.
That this violates or strains the HTML application
language is inevitable, but the answer is not
to relentlessly extend HTML, but to define
another Web language for that purpose.
Applets are a different issue from JavaScript.
An applet is a parameterized call to an
external handler.  The indexing engine
shouldn't look in that box except to note
that a call exists and perhaps what it
calls if that is useful indexable information.

Separating the control classes, the content
classes, and the script classes into 
separate DTDs is one approach.  Consider
that identifying variants by extending
the formal public identifier equates to
this.  

len bullard

On Wed, 29 May 1996, Scott E. Preece wrote:

>  From: john@eco.powernet.co.uk (John Middlemas)
> | 
> | I can't really see the problem here. If any code sections within an HTML
> | page were enclosed by say <CODE> and </CODE> extensions, then any search
> | engine could be set up to just ignore those sections, by looking for
> | those tags.
> ---
> 
> The problem is that in some cases (a growing number) the "content" of
> the page is generated by the code.  If you don't execute the code, you
> don't have any words to index.  This is a significant obstacle to
> providing effective indexing and access to the information on the Web.
> 
> The problem has existed from the beginning (pages that are actually
> front ends to database search engines typically offer no clue to
> indexers of what the content of their database may cover), but the
> growth in scripting languages and applets is sure to exacerbate the
> problem.
> 
> scott
> 
> --
> scott preece
> motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
> phone:	217-384-8589			  fax:	217-384-8550
> internet mail:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com
>

Received on Wednesday, 29 May 1996 16:15:51 UTC