- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charlesn@sunrise.srl.rmit.edu.au>
- Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 12:43:13 +1000 (EST)
- To: WAI <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
- cc: WAI GL <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Hmmm. Fine idea, but I suspect that in practice it won't happen. Most browsers use the .xyz extensions to determine type automagically anyway. I don't know whether this is an officially standard practise, or just a sensible one. But then I do know that it doesn't always work properly (when I first installed explorer 4 it decided that Netscape, as the default browser at the time, should handle .html files. Would setting TYPE have fixed this?), so having explicit TYPE is useful. Charles On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Kynn Bartlett wrote: > At 12:01 p.m. 10/01/98 +1000, Charles McCathieNevile wrote: > >But perhaps there should be a guideline about this: > > >Guideline: Where a link points to a resource in a 'format which is not a w3c > >recommendation (eg pdf, zip, powerpoint etc - what is the position of > >plain text here?)' then it should be made clear in the text (preferably) > >of, or (else) near the link what kind of a resource is being pointed to. > >[p2/3?] > > The TYPE attribute should also be used for non-HTML links too. > > Expanded example: > > This document is available in several formats: <A > href="mydoc.htm">HTML version</A>, <A HREF="mydoc.rtf" > TYPE="application/rtf">Rich Text Format > (Priamrily for Microsoft Word processors)</A>, <A HREF="mydoc.pdf" > TYPE="application/pdf">PDF-Portable Document or Acrobat format, which > requires</A> the <A HREF="http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/">the acrobat > reader, which can be downloaded free for many platforms</A>. > > This allows a clever user agent (of which none currently exist, > mind you) to flag selected links that are not supported or perhaps > are set to be flagged by user preferences. > > Sample rendering: > > This document is available in several formats: _HTML version_, > _Rich Text Format_ [Unsupported], _PDF-Portable Document or > Acrobat format which requires_ [External viewer] the _the acrobat > reader, which can be downloaded free for many platforms_. > > > > -- > Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://www.idyllmtn.com/~kynn/ > Chief Technologist & Co-Owner, Idyll Mountain Internet; Fullerton, California > Enroll now for my online stylesheets (CSS) class! http://www.hwg.org/classes/ > The voice of the future? http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/w3c/voicebrowsers.html > >
Received on Wednesday, 30 September 1998 23:08:31 UTC