- From: Murray Altheim <murray@spyglass.com>
- Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 16:09:57 -0400
- To: cbullard@hiwaay.net
- Cc: w3c-sgml-wg@www10.w3.org
Len Bullard <cbullard@hiwaay.net> writes:
[...]
>> bosak@atlantic-83.eng.sun.com (Jon Bosak) wrote:
>> > 2'. In particular, I think that it is of the utmost importance to
>> > distinguish meaning (relationship typing) from behavior (which
>> > includes presentation). I think that the analogy between semantic
>> > tagging vs. style information in SGML and relationship typing vs. link
>> > behavior is an apt and powerful one.
>
>And one not embraced by the majority of web applications. They
>may know something.
I believe a more accurate answer here is that the majority of Web
applications only lex the documents, and therefore don't build parse trees
that would enable more complex link relationships. This design decision may
have been the result of the assumption of broken HTML markup and/or the
inability of the programmers to create something as complex as nsgmls for
WWW that could also provide error recovery. A whole lotta error recovery.
Spyglass, Microsoft, Netscape and I'm sure most other Web browsers couldn't
respond to a request to jump "within element with ID 'a25', to third child
of type 'P' within the second child of type 'LI'" if you held a sharpened
potato to their heads. And this ability is precisely (for me) one of the
exciting promises of XML links.
Murray
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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 Thursday, 23 January 1997 16:05:49 UTC