Re: Future of HTML

At 07:15 98/03/26 -0500, david_richmond@nl.compuware.com wrote:
>      Name         : David Richmond

>      Data-Type Formatting
>      --------------------
>      
>      I would like to see a formal HTML way of formatting data-type values, 
>      such as dates and numbers. The raw value would be specified using USA 
>      conventions, but can be reformatted to the user agent's conventions. 
>      For example, an american date of 3/26/98 would be shown in a European 
>      user agent as 26/3/98 or even as 26 March 1998.

Such stuff has been discussed and has actually been included in the first
version of HTML i18n, what later became RFC 2070. It met serious resistance,
and was dropped.

The problem is that most languages do not have the ambiguity of 3/26/98
vs. 26/3/98. And the HTML documents are in a given language. The US date
convention is maybe the only thing that creates real problems, and the
solution above is definitely the wrong one, as other posters already
have said.


>      CSS Aliases
>      -----------
>      
>      This suggestion applies to those of us who write CSS by hand, as 
>      opposed to via CSS editors. It would be useful to be able to define an 
>      alias which can be used throughout the style-sheet, removing the need 
>      to duplicate definitions.

The CSS working group actually had a look at this. There very quite a few
places where a concept such as alias/macro/variable/... would come in
very handy, and would give very nice functionality.

But the possibilities for definition and application that came up were
so varied, and with so wide-reaching implications, that it was considered
that the topic needed more time and study before going into a spec.

So maybe you will see something like this later :-).


Regards,   Martin.

Received on Thursday, 26 March 1998 19:06:52 UTC