self-contained html file format

HTML is probably the most portable document display format after plain
text.  However, its use as a document exchange and archival format is
diminished by the inability to embed binary data, most significantly
images.

It seems to me that it would be immensely useful to have some standard
scheme for storing an html document along with all of its external data
(such as images) in a single file.  It could use some archival format
such as .zip or .tar, some standard file extension like .zhtml, and some
standard mime type like application/zhtml.  The benefit would be that
.zhtml would be a self-contained document instead of a metadocument
containing some of the content but linking to the rest.

Thoughts?  I am not subscribed, please CC me on replies.

Josh Haberman

Received on Wednesday, 22 January 2003 02:14:26 UTC