<resource> [was: Proposal for SIZE attribute ]

In message <199601091406.IAA18571@predator.urbana.mcd.mot.com>, Scott E. Preece
 writes:
>   From: iburrell@loki.stanford.edu (Ian Burrell)
>|
>|   I was thinking recently that a SIZE attribute that indicated the
>|   physical size in bytes of an included object would be a useful
>|   addition to HTML.
>---
>
>My mindset is sufficiently object-oriented that it really turns my
>stomach to have a referencing document specify things about the
>referenced resource.  Having said that, however, providing a way to give
>an expected-size hint bothers me a lot less than having the reference
>indicate the type of the referenced item...

We hashed this out in the office just a couple months ago, in
fact. The spec is still mostly in "back of the envelope" form, but you
can see the DTD and examples:


http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html-pubtext/resource.mod
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html-test/resource/spec-examples


The basic idea is that a new element <resource> allows you
to say things of the form:

	The X attribute of R is Y
		as: <resource href=R> <meta name=X value=Y> ... </resource>

		A few attributes are institutionalized, and can be expressed as:

		<resource href=R X=Y X2=Y2 ...></resource>

and
	There is a link of type T from R to S.
		as: <resource href=R> <link rel=T href=S></resource>

e.g.

	The Content-Length of foo.gif is 234234
	The Content-Language of foo.html.fr is FR

	There is a PNG-format version of foo at foo.png.
	There is an PNG-format version of foo at foo.png.

	The TOC of chapter-1.html is toc.html.

Nifty, huh?

Dan

Received on Thursday, 11 January 1996 02:15:12 UTC