Re: Client-side highlighting; tag proposal

>> <MARK TYPE=HIGHLIGHT START=123 END=333>
>>
>That is exactly what's in the latest HTML 3 draft,
>(except TYPE is named CLASS).  START is an ID attribute,
>and END is an IDREF.   MARK elements must occur in pairs.

>> Ideas? The above does not feel good to me, and neither do PI's or
>> paired tags.
> 
>What does not feel good about it?  I think it's a very
>good approach.

Paired elements like the above mean that you have to maintain more
state when you are rendering a document (ie. you have to traverse the
entire document tree preceeding the current element, whereas with
container based control, you only need to traverse the ancestors
leading up to a node). The reason I don't like word offsets of for
much the same reason. 

This is not much of a problem with small documents, but for optimising
the redisplay of large documents, it is a very important issue. This
could also be important for optimising redisplay when scrolling.

One fellow mentioned that we need a way to solve both the
highlighting, and the annotation problem. I think using parts from
HyTime Location Module, or at least concepts from it, combined with a
multipart MIME message might be the best way to go (and it's
applicable to other media types!!!). One way or another, specifying,
and implementing, such functionality will cause some pain.

Received on Monday, 13 March 1995 11:42:43 UTC