- From: Mark Davis <mark.davis@jtcsv.com>
- Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 11:28:46 -0800
- To: "Al Gilman" <asgilman@iamdigex.net>, <ishida@w3.org>, <w3c-i18n-ig@w3.org>, <public-i18n-geo@w3.org>, "Martin Duerst" <duerst@w3.org>
- Cc: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
On a related issue, I have long felt that the "backwards compatibility" aspects of HTML are ugly. Because the policy is that browsers skip what they don't know, it doesn't allow for richer text within elements, and we just get hacks like "alt", that cannot contain marked up text. Ideally, we'd be able to mark elements which -- with their contents -- should be skipped if the browser doesn't know what they mean, and be able to include elements that substitute for unknown elements. To do that, one would have to have attributes that would be scanned for, even if the element is not known. An example would be something like: <p>This is <foobar skipIfUnknown="true">blah blah <moreStuff>blah</moreStuff>blah</foobar><fallback element="foobar"><span xml:lang="en">If <i>blah</i> is not available, blah</span></fallback> If the browser understood "foobar", it would do something with the contents: blah blah <moreStuff>blah</moreStuff>blah and ignore <span xml:lang="en">If <i>blah</i> is not available, blah</span> If it didn't understand "foobar", it would do the reverse. Of course, it is probably too late for this kind of approach now, but it would have made things much easier. Mark (ᛗᚪᚱᚳ) ________ mark.davis@jtcsv.com IBM, MS 50-2/B11, 5600 Cottle Rd, SJ CA 95193 (408) 256-3148 fax: (408) 256-0799
Received on Thursday, 20 March 2003 14:29:06 UTC