Re: HTML3 body tag

Dave Raggett writes:

> We could perhaps use SGML processing directives, e.g.
> 
>     <?include "http://foo.com/bar.html.inc">
> 
> But note that a new content type is needed since the inclusion is a piece
> of a document, rather than a valid HTML document itself.
> 
Two comments in reply:

1) A pox on processing instructions!  If we had to use a 
non-element SGML syntax, there is a perfectly good SGML
mechanism -- external entities -- for handling just this
kind of thing:

<!ENTITY foobar SYSTEM "http://foo.com/bar.html.inc">

&foobar;

If/when the URL is updated, only the entity declaration 
would need to be redefined.  But this would require 
HTML browsers to be able to parse still more SGML.
Not necesarily a goal of this working group.

2) A more viable solution might be to introduce an <INCLUDE> element.

<DL> ....
<DT> foobar
<DD> <INCLUDE ID=foobar NAME="foobar" HREF="http://foo.com/bar.html.inc"
              REL="subdoc" REV="glossary" 
	      TITLE="The definition of foobar is...">

Murray

P.S.  Looking at the HTML 3.0 spec, I am surprised to see the REV
attribute missing from both <A> and <LINK>.  Why is that?

I'm glad to see a list of values for REL, but I wonder why 
each begins with a leading capital letter.  Since case is
significant for these attribute values, according to the DTD,
I would suggest that lower-case values be used.  In fact, I wonder
whether we need to discuss that as a design principle.

Hmmm!  Come to think of it, I don't think that we (HTML WG)
have any articulated and documented design principles.

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Murray C. Maloney			Internet:  murray@sco.com
Technical Publications Writer/Architect	Uucp:	   ...uunet!sco!murray
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Disclaimer: I'm speaking for myself.  'T ain't nobody else to blame but me.
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Member of IETF HTML Working Group 
Member of SGML Open Internet and WWW Technical Committee
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Received on Tuesday, 7 March 1995 09:48:05 UTC