Re: Enhancements to Forms - another loss??

>> maybe a <SUBST> tag..

>From:	walter@natural-innovations.com (Walter Ian Kaye)>
>But unfortunately, that's procedural (like JavaScript) not structural
>(as HTML is).

It could be recast in structural terms, assuming you accept <OBJECT> as 
being structural not procedural (where <OBJECT>...</OBJECT> excludes the 
... part of the document if the specified object can be displayed).

>I would favor the space-delimited ALTSRC/ALTREF="url#1 url#2 url%20#3"

ALTSRC/ALTREF/LOWSRC and URNs only address resources, i.e.,
   (1) Alternate versions of resources due to:
       (a) system limitations
       (b) user preferences
and perhaps
   (2) Duplicate copies of resources due to
       (a) load distribution or network geography
I also think we need to address:
   (3) Alternate attributes other than resources
No existing scheme for alternate resources deals with (3). I don't 
particularly care for the <SUBST> tag as I proposed it but it does 
address (1) and (3) albeit not (2), although I suppose you could make the 
user's location a "preference". No browser I know of allows users to 
specify preferences for alternate versions of resources. HTTP/Accept (as 
far as I know) doesn't allow specification of preferences I'd like (e.g., 
I can't say that I want the smallest version of a picture although I can 
say I'd rather have text/html than text/plain).

I hope someone has a better suggestion. Perhaps a way to use URNs + 
HTTP/Accept and some other mechanism to specify the alternate attributes? 
Perhaps a way to enhance accept to allow specification of preferences?

>A temporary(?) workaround would be to have a CGI generate the entire
>form page, so it could insert the desired action URL.

My preference (bias if you prefer) is to create universal pages that work 
in any browser, and to evolve HTML in ways that make that possible. I 
like <OBJECT> for that reason. I dislike frames for the same reason. 
Otherwise we end up needing more and more complex customization of pages 
and we're doomed to failure. [If there are N possible features we need to 
customize on (a media type being one kind of feature) we could 
potentially need 2^N versions of a document.]

    --- Bruce Leban
    Akimbo Systems
    http://www.akimbo.com/globetrotter
    Publish on the web without learning HTML! (Really.)

Received on Wednesday, 12 February 1997 23:39:53 UTC