Re: Generic LIST Element Proposal

On Mon, 31 Jul 1995, Michael J Hannah wrote:
>
> In this e-mail forum Ka-Ping Yee encouraged those who would complain to 
> construct fully fleshed-out proposals.  I have accepted that challenge.  

Hmmm... i don't really remember saying something like that (though it is
nice to know that someone notices i'm trying to voice some thoughts here).  
Which message were you referring to?

> Since the details of such a proposal are extensive, I have posted them on 
> the Web.  This complete proposal, with comments and examples, is posted at:
> 
>   http://www.sandia.gov/sci_compute/lists.html

I had a look at this, and i like the concept.  Aiming for simplicity and
separation of presentation into style sheets is generally something i
agree with.  It's the way i would like things to have been done the first
time around, i think -- but then the resistance to removing OL and UL
may be so strong that their slight semantic meaning may entrench them in
the language.  There will be more resistance due to the added markup for
producing numbers, unfortunately.  I've often thought that a good way
around this would be for macros to operate in some way -- shortcuts that
would let you do things properly in HTML 3.0, with as little typing (or 
less) than half-baked HTML 2 and/or NHTML hacks.  Perhaps i'll consider
how to do this more formally when i have some time.

The automatic numbering ability is particularly attractive, though i'd
look for a way to reference numbers previously used.  (For instance,
if you number a figure with <num id="fig">, how can you make "please
see Figure 3" appear in the text?  Tricky.  Maybe requires two identifiers?)


Ping (Ka-Ping Yee):  2B Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada
kryee@csclub.uwaterloo.ca | 62A Churchill St, Waterloo N2L 2X2, 519 886-3947
CWSF 89, 90, 92; LIYSF 90, 91; Shad Valley 92; DOE 93; IMO 91, 93; ACMIPC 94
-- Belldandy - Hiyama Hikaru - Amano Ai - Hayakawa Moemi - Ayukawa Madoka --
New! <http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/kryee/> Yeah, i finally made a home page.

Received on Monday, 31 July 1995 20:21:31 UTC