Re: Meta stuff[was: [Fwd: Review of HTML 4.0 Specification]]

Chris Lilley wrote:
> 
> On Sep 17, 11:05am, Dan Connolly wrote:
> 
> > Chris Lilley wrote:
> > > What they agreed on isn't a disaster;
> >
> > I believe it is. A link that's not marked up as a link
> > is a big problem to me.
> 
> HTML has many examples of links not marked up as links. Foremost among
> these are:
> 
> A HREF
> A NAME
> IMG SRC
> OBJECT DATA

Those are all identified as links by the spec (except A NAME).
Don't forget <form METHOD=GET ACTION="...">. Well... this
was made clear in the HTML 2 spec, anyway:

===========
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_7.html#SEC7

Each of the following markup constructs indicates the tail anchor
of a hyperlink or set of hyperlinks: 

     A elements with HREF present. 
     LINK elements. 
     IMG elements. 
     INPUT elements with the SRC attribute present. 
     ISINDEX elements. 
     FORM elements with `METHOD=GET'. 
===========

Nope... it seems that the HTML 4 spec gets this wrong
(i.e. wrong in my opinion, and different from HTML 2.0):

============
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html40-970917/struct/links.html#h-13.1.3

There are two HTML elements that define links: LINK and A.
============


> > > more to the point they had agreement
> > > from search engine folks and librarians and etc etc - if such diverse
> > > industry groups all agree to go a certain way, I think it is unwise
> > > fro W3C to simply say "no".
> >
> > I really feel beaten down when I have to cede important
> > architectural points on the basis of more people shouting
> > louder.
> 
> I hope that you don't really feel that group agreement is just "people
> shouting louder"

Not in all cases, but in this case, I feel it is just people
shouting louder. I believe they were presented with technical
arguments and refused to evaluate them. They offered no
technical counterargument. They just said "but we like META
and we don't like LINK."


> or that issues should remain open indefinitely until
> there are no opposing voices. Otherwise we would still be finishing
> off HTML 2.0

Yes, there is something to be said for progress.
But if it were just for progress and agreement and
money and commercial interests and all that, I wouldn't
be here--I would have sold out to the highest bidder
long ago. I remain in this position because I feel I
have a mandate to speak out on architectural issues.

-- 
Dan
http://www.w3.org/Team/connolly
phone://1/512/310-2971

Received on Wednesday, 17 September 1997 15:36:10 UTC