IMG tag doesn't seem to support relative HEI & WID values as standard

Why doesn't the HTML4.0 spec support percentages for the height & width
attributes to the IMG tag?  As I understand the spec (I've reproduced
the relevant portions below), the values for the HEI and WID
attributes must be expressed as absolute pixels.

I understand that in HTML 4.0, the OBJECT tag is the preferred way of
including images.  However, given that IMG is still an option in 4.0,
and that a lot of browsers do support relative height and width
attributes now, it seems appropriate to have that standardized.

   <Excerpts from HTML spec>

   Lengths and Pixels

   Values of the type "length" may either be specified as an integer
   representing the number of pixels of the canvas (screen, paper) or as a
   percentage of the available horizontal or vertical space. The HTML DTD
   generally uses %Length for length values that permit percentages and
   %Pixels for values that only permit pixels.

   ....

   Including an image: the IMG element

   <!-- To avoid problems with text-only UAs you need to provide
	a description with ALT, and avoid server-side image maps -->
   <!ELEMENT IMG - O EMPTY      --  Embedded image -->
   <!ATTLIST IMG
     %attrs;                          -- %coreattrs, %i18n, %events --
     src         %URL       #REQUIRED -- URL of image to embed --
     alt         CDATA      #IMPLIED  -- description for text only browsers --
     align       %IAlign    #IMPLIED  -- vertical or horizontal alignment --
     height      %Pixels    #IMPLIED  -- suggested height in pixels --
     width       %Pixels    #IMPLIED  -- suggested width in pixels --
     border      %Pixels    #IMPLIED  -- suggested link border width --
     hspace      %Pixels    #IMPLIED  -- suggested horizontal gutter --
     vspace      %Pixels    #IMPLIED  -- suggested vertical gutter --
     usemap      %URL       #IMPLIED  -- use client-side image map --
     ismap       (ismap)    #IMPLIED  -- use server-side image map --
     >

Received on Tuesday, 2 September 1997 14:23:35 UTC