Re: deprecated tags in Wilbur & Cougar -Reply -Reply

> I don't think that classes should be standardized by W3C or by UA authors.
> I think authors and organization that create lots of documents should be
> able to create there own classes.

I'll agree that authors should be able to create their own classes. In
fact, I second this opinion heartily. However, I will also say that people want
more presentation than HTML delivers or some novice authors deliver.

I for one would be willing to support a default definition for a
specific class keyword *if* it isn't overriden by the author or
explicitly rejected by the user. I'd be more likely to say that the
standardization of classes should be the standardization of the
"default" implementation of classes *only*.

> It would be unfortunate if the W3C or UA authors decided to limit the
> flexibility of CSS by specifying certain standardized classes. It would
> mean at a minimum, that tools like mine would have to check for all the 
> prespecified classes and avoid them (no telling if the author of a FrameMaker
> document really meant paragraph tag FOO to mean the same as W3C's class FOO.

I would actually go so far as to say that if the W3 or whomever puts the
final rubber stamp on the standard doesn't do so very quickly there will
be a significant outcry towards allocating class keywords that people
want to define for themselves -- unless of course, it is only the
default implementation and can be overriden by the author.

> > Further, if classes are to be used to convey semantic information that
> > is useful to tools (such as indexers), they must be standardized or the
> > information the classes encode is unusable.
> 
> Classes should not be used to convey semantic information to indexers. This
> should be left to element tags and other attriubtes.

I don't believe that stylesheets as we define them to control
presentation should be used to manage meta-information. I'm 
kind of at a loss to understand what semantic information would
be relevant in terms of presentation control. Are you (person of the
first part) saying that we should be merging META tag information
and stylesheets?

I'm also going to step in here and ask some general questions about
people's opinions on this matter. In theory, we define additional
invisible information or meta-information with the <META> tag and
sometimes with the <LINK> tag. However, this is at least one grass
roots movement that says that this is an awkward, cumbersome, and
in general lengthy way to define information. They go into an alternate
suggestion at http://www.identify.com/

Mary

Received on Tuesday, 6 August 1996 20:00:14 UTC