Re: <plaintext> tag obsolete? I think not!

• From: Tim Bagot <timothy.bagot@keble.oxford.ac.uk>
• Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 09:48:23 +0000 (GMT)
• To: HTML mailing list <www-html@w3.org>
• Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.96.980203091754.1256A-100000@sable.ox.ac.uk>

On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, Russell Steven Shawn O'Connor wrote:

> > The only way <pre> could make the <plaintext> tag obsolete is if it
> > provided all the functionality of the <plaintext> tag.  But it doesn't!
> > <Plaintext> printed all the html code to the screen.  The <pre> tag
> > reads the HTML code and does the necessary formatting.
> 
> Sorry to druge this up.  I've been reading through the archives.
> 
> Wouldn't the "correct" way to handle this be:
> <PRE>
> <![CDATA[ <<  Your favourate HTML text goes here, just be careful when
> using two ]'s followed by an >.  >> ]]>
> </PRE>

This may well be "correct", but I don't imagine it's widely supported. 
Even so, PLAINTEXT is still unnecessary, since you can just use PRE with
with &lt;, &gt;, and &amp;. There is nothing that can be done with
PLAINTEXT but not PRE; the reverse is not true.

Tim Bagot

Received on Tuesday, 3 February 1998 04:48:51 UTC