Re: <dynamic> tag idea

* Bert Johnson wrote:
>I write to you with a proposal for a new tag in the HTML/XHTML protocol.

Protocols define communication processes, XHTML doesn't and is thefore
no protocol; it's a markup language.

>I propose the dynamic content tag (maybe <dynamic></dynamic>).  This tag
>would be very convenient for spiders, parsers, and page update notifiers.  
>
>My budding company (Johnso Productions) is in the finalizing stages of the
>Johnso Page Update Notifier - which parses pages and alerts you if there
>have been recent modifications.  The problem is that many pages contain
>dynamic "random" content, such as quotes of the day, member counts, or
>timestamps.  By putting those non-static fields between <dynamic> tags,
>it would allow many autonomous tasks to run easier.

You don't want to markup dynamic content, you want to markup unimportant
sections of a document. If something isn't important, user may or should
ignore them, so let's call that element <ignore>. Why should authors
insert informations into a document that are ment to be ignored? Or why
should they even mark them up as such? No, I don't see what value this
adds to XHTML. It's up to you, the one who wants to figure out, if a
page has changed, to take ignorable portions into consideration. You
should observe the relevant page for some time and see what sections
change very regularly and ignore those portions.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann { mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de } http://www.bjoernsworld.de
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