Re: Indexing non-HTML objects

On Tue, 6 May 1997, Andrew Daviel wrote:

> On Sat, 3 May 1997, Gregory J. Woodhouse wrote:
> 
> > Perhaps I misread your post, and so I'm just stating the obvious, but the
> > existence of a LINK tag in HTML really has little to with the existence of
> > a LINK method in HTTP. Of course, it would be desirable that the server be
> > aware of HTML LINKs, so it could process link data without having to
> > parse the file. But otherwise, links at the HTTP level are quite
> > independent of HTML. 
> 
> 
> I realize there's no formal tie between HTML and HTTP. However, as the 
> elements have the same name, and the same vaguely-worded suggested use, 
> it seemed reasonable to use them for the same thing.

There is no LINK header that I can find in HTTP/1.1 nor is there a LINK
method.


> Seems to me people using a JavaScript generated content have the same 
> problem as those using frames - think carefully about what keywords
> and description you want, then include them as metadata. Kind of messes 
> up fulltext searches, though.

The problem with meta data is that it is intrinsicly limiting where as the
approach I"ve been advocating of a complete surrogate document correlated
with the otherwise unindexable resource provides a much richer descriptive
space.

In my experience, most content authors do a poor job of coding a good
representation of their content with a few words. Software which considers
a full text description seems to be more generally effective.

There is a evolutionary move to including abstract/description and keyword
metadata in HTML documents and there is nothing to preclude such data in
the indexable documents I'm advocating.

But it seems to me that there is limited interest in this topic at this
time in the HTTP-WG so perhaps this thread should whither away and die.

Dave Morris

Received on Tuesday, 6 May 1997 14:07:52 UTC