My humble comments on the HTML 4.0 draft

I've only had a quick glance though the draft, but here or my comments

1. First over all I like it. :-)

2. Question which is better

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Foobar</TITLE>
<meta http-equiv=Content-language content=en-CA>
...

or


<HEAD lang=en-CA>
<TITLE>Foobar</TITLE>
...

I was going to suggest a Content-language example in the Meta element
section, but if there are already enough examples or the 2nd method from
above is preferred, then maybe it doesn't matter.

3. Your Link example seems strange and wrong to me.
-- From the Specs --
<HTML>
   <HEAD>
   <LINK rel="Index"    href="../index.html">
   <LINK rel="Next"     href="Chapter_3.html">
   <LINK rev="Previous" href="Chapter_1.html">
   </HEAD>
-- --

Here you use rev="Previous" however, from the HTML source for the
specification you have.

-- From the Specs source --
<head>
<title>Links in HTML documents</title>
<LINK rel="prev" SRC="tables.html">
<LINK rel="next" SRC="includes.html">
-- --

This uses rel="Prev"  Is "Prev" different form "Previous"?  I think this
last way is correct.  Where is there official documentation of the use of
LINK elements?  This is the way I've been using LINK:

-- From my source (ff5.html) --
<LINK REL=next REV=previous HREF="ff6.html">
<LINK REL=previous REV=next HREF="ff4.html">
<LINK REL=TOC HREF="ffindex.html">
-- --

Anyhow, I'm very confused now.

4. Lynx supports <![ IGNORE [ foo ]]>.  I think it would be nice if this
was in the specs.  Or is it implicitly there because HTML is an SGML
application?

5. Why is Applet Deprecated, but IMG is not?

6. Why is U (Underline) Deprecated, but others like TT and B are not?

7. Should <A NAME=foo> be deprecated? (replaced by <SPAN ID=foo>) It seems
odd to have 2 completely different ways of marking link endpoints in a
document. And obviously the ID method is better because validators can
check for name collisions.

8. Is DOCTYPE case sensitive?

9. I'm a little concerned about all these onclick event etc.  Just as
style sheets have been separated from the HTML because it is screen
(layout) oriented, Shouldn't these be pulled out as well?  Put into
something else?  How can texted based browsers possibly deal with them.

10. Performance, Implementation, and Design Notes
When I load this section I get a whole bunch of Javascript errors.  I'm
running Netscape 4.0 under NT. Anyone else have this problem?

That's all I noticed for now.  Some of my answers may be buried in the
Specs.  I didn't go over it all that carefully.  If I missed something
obvious I'm sorry.

-- 
Russell O'Connor            |              roconnor@uwaterloo.ca
        <http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/%7Eroconnor/>
"And truth irreversibly destroys the meaning of its own message"
-- Anindita Dutta, "The Paradox of Truth, the Truth of Entropy"

Received on Tuesday, 8 July 1997 19:05:32 UTC