Re: <insert> and external entity references

On Wed, 20 Mar 1996, Abigail wrote:

> Murray Altheim wrote:
> ++ 
> ++ This would really be the big change: not using HTML as the base language of
> ++ the Web. We'd use SGML (MIME type "text/sgml; level=1|2|3|4"), allowing the
> ++ DOCTYPE of the document to determine the DTD, just as in SGML. That DOCTYPE
> ++ could simply specify a dialect of HTML for the current majority of web
> ++ documents.
> 
> I have heard this many times, yet I see problems noone has given
> me an answer to. HTML certainly is more than just a grammer.
> Search engines can index a document properly _because_ there
> is an implicit meaning to <TITLE>, that <H1> is more important
> than <H6>, that <STRONG> is used for something else than <B>, etc.
> 
> But in the DTD, <H1> and <H6> have interchangeable roles;
> <STRONG> and <B> have the same context and the same content;
> <TITLE> is just something which appears in the <HEAD>.
> 
> <A>, <IMG>, <INPUT> have side effects which aren't set in the DTD.
> 
> If each document comes with its own DTD, then what? A user agent
> knows how to parse it, but how should it be displayed? Of course,
> authors could be required to deliver a style sheet as well, but
> they have to include everything, as there cannot be user agent
> defaults to fall back on. And what about user preferences? How
> is a user supposed to set preferences, if each document can have
> unknown elements?

A style and semantics language like dsssl could solve this, at least for 
a known DTD. Each DTD can refer to a dsssl program which renders it.

Benjamin C. W. Sittler

Received on Tuesday, 19 March 1996 20:24:12 UTC