Re: %flow and headers and address

Stuart Young <nakor@glasswings.com.au> wrote:
>On Mon, 30 Sep 1996, Foteos Macrides wrote:
>
>> 	Have you included stuff from the MicroSoft DTD?  What I'm
>> envisioning is an EVERYTHING.DTD with anything any client has
>> implemented *and*(/or) has been documented (/proposed) formally
>> (via a public DTD), fitted together so that it all fits together
>> if it can, such that any other client could implement any or all
>> of it rationally, and any provider could include any combination
>> in a document instance and pass that to a validator.
>
>Some type of 'sectioning' of what is actually there would be good.
>
>Basically what I mean is some way either in the DTD to make a validator 
>actually "know" what areas of the DTD have been used, and showing them, 
>or some form of validator that'll allow such a distinction.
>
>It'd be useful to know that a page contains say, MSIE, Netscape, and HTML 
>3.2 based code, by running it past a validator using said DTD. Apart from 
>the fact it vaildates, you know what declaration types are used, and can 
>treat the document accordingly.
>
>This could also point out things like 'You are using HTML 1.0 code that 
>has been depreciated, along with HTML 3.2 code.', so you can be warned if 
>you are making a mistake.

	I agree with you that these things would be nice, as well as
with Murray that for HTML, as for HTTP and URI/URLs, the word "standard"
should *still* refer to things referenced with an IETF RFC number, though
the word "official" (IMHO) *can* refer to DTDs offered by the W3C (for
people who still need such a security blanket to cope with what has
happened to the Web during the past two years 8-), and to DTDs put out
for particular browsers by their developers.

	The bottom line, though, is that there is a pressing need not
likely to be filled by the W3C or developers of particular browsers,
nor is there any IEFT HTML-WG, so we "consumers" should fill that need
ourselves in a cooperative, harmonious manner.  There is no DOCTYPE one
can specify for "Kinder, Gentler", nor DTD one can select for WebTechs,
which will not yield false errors for markup that is actually being used
because some browser or SGML parser's display engine supports it, but
it is not in the specified DOCTYPE or selected DTD.  That discourages
many Webizens from bothering to validate their markup.  The W3C offers
an "official" DTD of "recommended practice".  Let's add an EVERYTHING
DTD for finding errors in "actually used" HTML, "officially recommended"
or not, and let's do it in a way which will hold up for valid SGML
parsers, i.e, so that it's likely to hold up indefinitely (could someday
be referenced as text/sgml with a DOCTYPE declaration for that DTD). 

				Fote

=========================================================================
 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 MACRIDES@SCI.WFBR.EDU         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
=========================================================================

Received on Tuesday, 1 October 1996 16:20:45 UTC