The Future of HTML (was: Acronyms and Abbreviations)

I am hereby killing the ACRONYM thread, with apologies to
those who have contributed interesting germane stuff.


I'll happily suggest a substitute topic:

We often see suggestions from folks frustrated with browsers'
HTML layout limitations. The first thought of many such people
is, "It would be nice if HTML had a tag <FOO> that did this."
The response to that kind of suggestion is pretty standard.

For a change, I'd like to hear from those of you who really
know HTML.  HTML 4.0 does have gaps.  What tags do you think
belong in future versions?

For example, (and I don't claim to be an authority on this
at all) I'd like to see markup for names:

  <name of="book">The Elements of Style</name>
  <name of="song">Penny Lane</name>
  <name of="periodical">The Alarmist</name>

...since these are often rendered differently from surrounding
text, at least in English.  Stylesheets could do that.  Instead,
I end up using <i> and quotes.

I'd also like some standard markup for notes:

  <note class="footnote">However, 66% of HTML authors have
  never heard of stylesheets.</note>

  <note class="stickynote" author="johnq@ixl.co">We should be
  more upbeat here.  After all, we did save these guys $2M.</note>

Also, I'm curious about <cite>; it seems it should have an
attribute <cite for="idref"> that allows the author to specify
what the cited authority is being cited for.


But please, don't dwell on these examples (and how dumb they
are).  I'm more interested in hearing what the *experts* feel
are the shortcomings of HTML 4.0, and what can be done to
improve matters.

-- 
Jason

Received on Friday, 22 October 1999 20:41:14 UTC