Silly questions...

I am a beginner in the WWW and HTML and would like
to ask some questions that have arisen when I have
read this list and some HTML documentation.

What are RFC referrings (RFC1866, RFC1867)?
When HTML is developed and enhanced and all
browsers seem to add tags and attributes of
their own and the internet-drafts present
only suggestions, is RFC some kind of a final
conclusion of it all?  If so, are these "laws"
to be found somewhere - where?


I read the draft about rel-rev attributes.  It
was still valid and it seemed to me that the
values of REL and REV are still open to
suggestions.  Here is some:

---

A lot of private and commercial WWW-sites have
Links-list attached to them.  Since the LINK
REL may (if I got it right) cause a button or
similar to appear to some kind of a toolbar
(depending on user agent), how about defining
REL=LINKS to be one of recognized values.  A
button in a toolbar would make it easier to a
user to go to the links page, when he wants to.
An example:

LINK REL=LINKS TITLE="Link page" HREF="links.html"

Does anyone find this useful?

---

Since there are browsers supporting different levels
of HTML (?), would a REL="Level_0", REL="Level_1" (or
REV="Level_0", REV="Level_1" and so on), be useful in
order to tell the user agent which link or document to
choose?  For example Lynx user would follow the link
marked as being level 0 while a Netscaper would take
a more advanced option?

---

What about REL="help" that would tell that the link
or the document (when REV="help") is a help page?  And
if this is reserved (as the values HOME, BACK and
FORWARD) for a help page of the browser, some other
value could be used to refer to the help page of the
current HTML document.

---

In the file draft-ietf-html-i18n-03.txt I found the 
following lines:

   <!--    html.dtd

           Document Type Definition for the HyperText Markup Language,
           extended for internationalisation (HTML DTD)

           Last revised: 96/01/23

           Authors: Daniel W. Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
                    Francois Yergeau <yergeau@alis.com>
           See Also: html.decl, html-1.dtd
             http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html
   -->

The "Last revised" part has probably nothing to do
with the HTML, but I would like to ask whether this
is a standardized, international way of writing
dates?  I have not encountered this expression too
often and for example a line 96/02/03 would get me
quite confused for I would not know if it meant
the 2nd of March or the 3rd of February...  (Yes,
it would mean the latter, but do I just have to
face the facts and learn the system, or is there
some other international way to express dates?)

---

Thank you all for bearing me and my questions...


        - Samuel Rinnetmäki -

---

ADDRESS:  Samuel Rinnetmäki  EMAIL:  m0rk0@clinet.fi
          Jalkajousentie 11  URL:    http://www.clinet.fi/~m0rk0
          SF-02630 Espoo 63  PHONE:  + 358 - 0 - 52 44 35

Received on Thursday, 14 March 1996 11:35:52 UTC