Critique of the ISO-HTML draft

I just finished reading the ISO HTML DTD, and although I do like
the initiative, there are several things in there that I would
like to comment on.

1) The DTD is not backwards compatible. HEAD and BODY are required,
to name just two examples.

2) In AREA, "shape=default" is omitted. This makes it impossible to
define an URL for all undefined areas in the map.

3) It does not seem possible to use ID as target of a hyperlink with
fragment identifier, like the idea was in HTML 3.0. Only <A NAME> is
suggested for this purpose.

4) The text for CAPTION suggests that for aligning stuff, you should
use something like P inside the caption. But the content model is
just %text, which does not permit P.

5) The example for CITE seems to suggest that it's now used for
*quotations* from another source ("The buck stops here", that's a
phrase, not a book title, is it?).

6) It does not seem possible to provide a caption for an OBJECT

7) The definition of SAMP differs from the one in RFC 1866. There
it says "The <SAMP> element indicates a sequence of literal characters,
typically rendered in a mono-spaced font."

8) Is there anything similar to this list to send comments like
this to?

9) For examples of the use of the <INPUT> element, please see subclauses
   Please see here for details, Please see here for details, Please see
   here for details, Please see here for details, Please see here for
   details, Please see here for details, Please see here for details,
   Please see here for details and Please see here for details.

[Why does the document have all these "Back to index" links
 sprinkled throughout it? That just looks silly in print.]

-- 
E-mail: galactus@htmlhelp.com .................... PGP Key: 512/63B0E665
Maintainer of WDG's HTML reference: <http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/>

Received on Wednesday, 2 April 1997 13:54:34 UTC