Re: <PAGE> proposal

On Fri, 22 Dec 1995, BearHeart / Bill Weinman wrote:

> At 06:06 pm 12/22/95 -0500, Arjun Ray wrote:
> >On Fri, 22 Dec 1995, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> >> Doesn't address the underlying problem, which is the coincidental cohesion of
> >> an abstraction (scrollable display extent) with a representation (file).
> 
> > [...] the operative concept is "document entity", i.e. everything 
> >between <HTML> and </HTML>[*]. The "abstraction" is merely a roundabout way 
> >of saying that rendering the document entity on certain devices could 
> >require a scrolling (or paging) capability in these devices: but the 
> >document entity *itself* carries no such assumption. 
> 
>    I don't see where it addresses the problem that Eric posed--that 
> being the attachment of HTML to the "scrollable display" abstraction. 

I don't see the problem, because I don't see the attachment:-) 

I remember early drafts of the HTML 1.0 spec, where the phrase "pageless
model" was used: in that (trivial) sense one could say that the entirety
of a HTML document is one "page". And strictly speaking, "scrollable
display" is hardly an abstraction: it's a rather concrete artifact of a
particular rendering context -- involving a "screen" being smaller than 
the "page" --  to which HTML is *not* tied.

> The current implementation, even though it's supposedly based on a 
> documentation language (SGML), has no support for non-scrollable page 
> definition. 

There seems to be an implicit imputation of "one screenful" -- or some
such scrolling constraint -- to a natural, more likely convivial,
definition of a "page", with which the "pageless model" being at odds has
all at once become a "problem", only by an inversion of the conceptual
model. The design of HTML is such that "multiple pages" are most naturally
expressed as multiple entities. 

> What he's suggesting, and I agree, is that we disengage the 
> "coincidental" tie between the representation (HTML) and the abstraction 
> (scrollable displays) by carefuly and minimally extending the language 
> to support a more general abstraction (paper). 

Since I'm clearly not understanding this "scrollable display" business, 
why paper is a more general abstraction escapes me entirely.

>    This would extend the usefulness of HTML to include applications 
> where a document needs to be available in both srollable (WWW) and 
> non-scrollable (paper) versions with one source file (HTML) without the 
> author having to mainatain multiple source versions of the same document. 

Though the terms used have been different, all I've gathered so far is an
argument that converting from a pageless model to a paged model somehow
eases maintenance. But then, what's the *real* problem? If it's a question
of having a single master source from which to produce target-specific or
customized versions, some *other* SGML application could be the way to go. 
Roll your own DTD, and either use a revision control system with make, or 
generate output on the fly.

I question the idea that *HTML* has to be the "one-stop shopping" answer. 


Regards,

Arjun

Received on Friday, 22 December 1995 21:06:47 UTC