Re: Boston, for those who weren't there

Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com> writes:
>[...] Murray Altheim had a good question, but I forget what it was.

Stylesheets and linking of meta information. Assuming even a minimal SGML
application (without tables, forms, hyperlinks, and other features folks in
the HTML world have come to expect*), we still need to provide a method of
attaching presentation information to our structured content.

>One parenthetical note - about half a dozen people separately said they
>wished we'd put FPI's in.  My standard answer was "James says it's too
>hard," but there is clearly a desire for this on the SGML side of the
>fence.  Not only would it be hard, it would add substantially
>to the spec.  I'd favor heel-dragging on this, but now would be a
>good time for pro-FPI manifestoes in the WG.

I was one, only because I see academic, corporate and government sites
wishing to build lightweight applications around a common DTD. Without FPIs
there is no simple way (other than the hack of embedding URLs into system
ids) of providing the benefits of public text. Perhaps a subset of TR9401
rather than the whole shebang would do fine.

Murray

* Netscape's new XML browser, called the 'Netscape Geomancer', already
supports XML frames, VRML, BGSOUND, and BLINK. It also supports a new
flavor of XML they've developed called XML+. Go smoke somethingk and call
me in de morning.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
    Murray Altheim, Program Manager
    Spyglass, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
    email: <mailto:murray@spyglass.com>
    http:  <http://www.cm.spyglass.com/murray/murray.html>
           "Give a monkey the tools and he'll eventually build a typewriter."

Received on Saturday, 23 November 1996 15:38:24 UTC