(unknown charset) Re: Cougar DTD: Do not use CDATA declared content for SCRIPT

Arne Knudson wrote:
>      Aargh! I'm guessing that this may have been said before, but
it's
> critical to understand. HTML is an application of SGML, the
Standardized
> Generalized Markup Language, ISO 8879:1986. What you refer to as
"markup"
> has **absolutely nothing** to do with the formatting of the document.
Markup
> is a description of the *structure* of the document.

Really? An HTML document is marked up to instruct the
browser/formatter/renderer what to do with the content. Where is your
argument to that? Whether the instructions are regarding the general
structure of headings and paragraphs or the specific typeface of an
individual character, the truth holds. As for the definition of
formatting, you are simply wrong. The format of a document includes its
shape and structure. On the lowest level, <EM>, <B>, <CITE>, etc. 
indicate character formatting--just relative instead of absolute.

Instead of expounding on the true nature of SGML and the appropriate
place for style, why not just address my premise, which is that if
inline scripts are to be "legal" in an HTML document, they should not
be enclosed in such inelegant and unintuitive constructs as
<![CDATA[this is <foo> text that &bar; should not get parsed]]>?

>      I think the only workable SGML-aware solution is the <SCRIPT
SRC="...">
> external-reference method. Mixing languages (and SGML *is* a
language) is
> always dangerous, and you usually have to present the embedded
language in
> some "special" way.

Ah, finally! Yes, *that* makes sense. But a lot of folks won't like it
anyway, and with both NS and MS supporting this type of construct:

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
script script script...
//-->
</script>

...discussion of alternatives may be moot. (And blasphemous or not, the
above is easier to deal with than the CDATA strangeness.)

> Take, for example, shell scripts...

Please, no.

David Perrell

Received on Friday, 26 July 1996 22:21:53 UTC