Re: Re[2]: FW: acronym in title...

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