Re: The Future of HTML (was: Acronyms and Abbreviations)

On Sun, 24 Oct 1999, Sue Sims wrote:

OK, I'm late, got so much to do, but I feel like commenting.

>No, please. The word "standard" is in quotes to indicate that this
>should not be normative (I think). I tried to begin a discussion of
>the feasibility of suggestions for "standard" class names in ciwas,
>but one well known CSS author found the concept sufficiently abhorrent
>that the discussion ended without debate. I'd begun an article on some
>suggestions in the Dublin Core, but the article simply lists the
>suggestions. If there were support for some _suggested_ class names, I
>could be inspired to actually add some content to the article.

Indeed, if it was just a matter of style, but I don't think that was the
intention of the original poster. And indeed, any element may be
implemented within XML, and surely there'll be quite a few people who
would want an element like NAME, enough to make it a feasible project. 

However, if very many people could use an element like NAME, it might be
something for HTML, nowadays, many large search engines has an option that
lets you search for the name of a person. I can imagine many queries on
search engines is for a something with a particular title, and so, a NAME
element would probably aid this considerably, if it became in widespread
use.... Thinking about it, NAME might not be such a bad idea, after all...

As I see it, an "of"-attribute of NAME would need some normative standard,
however. The thing I have with normative vs. informative standards, is
that if something are just informative, you might see a few people using
it, but the use if often not sufficiently consistent among different
authors so that automatic procesessing (e.g. by search engine looking of
names of persons) can be done reliably.

Probably, a good way to make a list of class and/or id names, would be to
design a little robot that can go out and pick up what people are
using...?

Best,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
Graduate astronomy-student                    Problems worthy of attack
University of Oslo, Norway            Prove their worth by hitting back
E-mail: kjetikj@astro.uio.no                                - Piet Hein
Homepage <URL:http://www.astro.uio.no/~kjetikj/>
Webmaster@skepsis.no

Received on Saturday, 6 November 1999 15:54:36 UTC