- From: Keith Rettig <KRettig@ctt.bellcore.com>
- Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 09:17:25 -0400
- To: www-html@www10.w3.org
- Cc: simonb@ctt.bellcore.com
Chris Tilbury provided an excellent alternative to our proposal for an outline markup scheme. With two minor alterations we fully support his modified proposal. It is much simpler to implement and has a lesser impact on existing browsers than our original proposal. While reading Chris' proposal, please keep in mind the following. The presence of the <LH> tag could obviate the need for IH as proposed by Chris. Chris wrote... [Incidently, does anyone know why we've got <LH> to provide a caption in a list, and <CAPTION> to provide a caption on everything else? Yes, I know <LH> is supposed to put the header at the top of the list, but isn't this just a presentation issue?] Our response to that would be to suggest that <LH> be used for the purposes that we have requested and that <CAPTION> be used as the current <LH> does. The LH's of nested lists can serve in place of IH. Our other modification would be to allow the specification of a level to which expansion should initially occur by providing a value for OUTLINED, e.g. OUTLINED=2 would expand to the second level. We feel that relegating outline expansion levels to a style sheet could result in an uneccessary proliferation of style sheets. Also, the presence of an OUTLINED value would serve two purposes; specification of a level, and the specification of the list into collapsable form. The beauty of Chris' approach is that any browsers which do not support accordian/outline text would simply display the outline as fully expanded. As would OUTLINED=0. Finally, we once again propose that the specification indicate that implementers should provide for automatic outline expansion when an attempt is made to jump to an "unexpanded" anchor. So, how about it? Can we add just one attribute to the existing HTML 3.0 markup for lists? Please! :-) What is our next step for requesting this feature? Should we re-write our proposal using this modified design? Chris' redesign...[snip] So, how can we achieve this? Well, how about something like this. <OL OUTLINED> <LI> <IH>This is the top outline level</IH> <P>This is the text below the header. In an Ordered or Unordered Outlined list this would not be displayed until the header was expanded. The enclosing of this text in the <P> element would ensure that the text would hopefully be displayed beneath the header on older, legacy browsers</P> <UL OUTLINED> <LI> <IH>This is the next outline level</IH> <P>This is the text describing it; again, note that since the content.model of the <LI> element is flow and flow includes lists, one can include multiple levels of outline without extra tags being required.</P> </LI> </LI> </OL> Which could display as [-] 1. This is the top outline level This is the text below the header. In an Ordered or Unordered list this would not be displayed until the header was expanded. The enclosing of this text in the <P> element would ensure that the text would hopefully be displayed beneath the header on older, legacy browsers. [+] * This is the next outline level on an "intelligent" browser, as 1. This is the top outline level This is the text below the header. In an Ordered or Unordered list this would not be displayed until the header was expanded. The enclosing of this text in the <P> element would ensure that the text would hopefully be displayed beneath the header on older, legacy browsers. * This is the next outline level This is the text describing it; again, note that since the content.model, of the <LI> element is flow and flow includes lists, one can include multiple levels of outline without extra tags being required. on a less intelligent one. Compared with the proposed scheme, this requires 1 additional element, <IH>, for Item Header: IH (Item Header) Permitted Context: Immediately following LI Content Model: %text A single modification to the LI specification[2], which should not affect the rendering of existing lists in any way whatsoever: LI (List Item) Permitted Context: UL or OL Content Model: Optional Item Header (IH), followed by %flow And the addition of a single attribute to the OL[3] & UL[4] specifications OUTLINED The presence of this attribute indicates to the user agent that this is an "outline" list. Outline lists should be rendered as an expandable/collapsable list, with the initial view of each <LI> being simply the Item Header (IH) if present; otherwise, the specific item should be non-expandable. User Agents should provide an appropriate mechanism for expanding or contracting each LI to display it's full content - in the case of visual browsers, this could be by clicking on the numbering or dingbat identifying the list item (which can be specified in <LI> using the SRC or DINGBBAT attributes). Personally, this is the absolute limit which I would feel could be encompassed within the markup without encroaching on completely presentational issues (which I think all of this is, anyhow). Anything further, including indicating which levels should be expanded initially, and which shouldn't, should live in stylesheets. References: [1] <URL:http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/people/dsr/html/CoverPage.html> [2] <URL:http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/people/dsr/html/listitem.html> [3] <URL:http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/people/dsr/html/seqlists.html> [4] <URL:http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/people/dsr/html/bulletlists.html> Regards, Chris -- Chris Tilbury, Estates Office, University of Warwick, UK, CV4 7AL Tel: +44 1203 523523 x2665 Fax: +44 1203 524444 MIME mail welcomed mailto:Chris.Tilbury@estate.warwick.ac.uk [cut] Keith Rettig (krettig@ctt.bellcore.com) Simon Blackwell (simonb@ctt.bellcore.com) Keith Rettig Do Something! \\\\ KRettig@ctt.bellcore.com (@ @) ------------------------------------------------ooO-( )-Ooo-----
Received on Wednesday, 19 July 1995 09:16:16 UTC