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

It is possible to print *any* characters to the screen using the <pre> tag;
anything you could possibly want to display with the <plaintext> tag, you
can also display using the <pre> tag instead.

Therefore the <plaintext> tag is redundant and unneeded.

Of course, it's a little more difficult trying to edit a page with a text
editor such that it will "display" the appearance of html code, but so ?
The <plaintext> tag makes text more difficult to parse by making things
less consistent.

Using this argument, you could say that the only way a VCR could make a
8-track tape player obsolete is if it provided all the functionality of
that 8-track tape player. But it doesn't ! The 8-track tape player accepts
those classic 8-track tapes, and plays the music on them, but the VCR does
not.

I think it is a false argument.

I am kind of skeptical of the "CDATA" code listed. I think this is SGML
markup, and although it might work fine in browsers based on SGML, I
thought the HTML standard recommended *not* putting SGML code into HTML
documents.

I think the "correct" way to handle this is
"if you want to display a <, type &lt;"
"if you want to display a >, type &gt;"
"if you want to display a &, type &amp;"
"if you want to display any other ISO-8859-1 character, just type it in
literally."
(those are the only modifications needed
to display *any* desired ISO-8859-1 text, right ?).

>> 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>
>
>--
>Russell O'Connor                           roconnor@uwaterloo.ca
>    <URL: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"

--
+ David Cary "mailto:d.cary@ieee.org" "http://www.rdrop.com/~cary/"
| Future Tech, Unknowns, PCMCIA, digital hologram, <*> O-

Received on Tuesday, 3 February 1998 16:03:51 UTC