Some thoughts on an extensible hypertext markup language

The current debate on which elements to retain in XHTML, which
to add, and which to expunge, leads me once again to suggest
that no matter which elements are included and which are
excluded, the resulting language will satisfy no-one.  I continue
to believe that the only way in which such a language can be
truly satisfactory is if it is extensible in a simple and
straightforward way, such that every author and his dog can
create the exact dialect that he/she needs for the document
at hand.  A couple of months ago, I lay in bed and thought
about how such a minimal language might look, and sent the
essence of those thought processes to Chris Rowley, a friend and 
colleague at the Open University.  In brief, I came to the 
conclusion that a minimal extensible hypertext markup language 
("MXHTML") might need as few as four containers, although 
Chris suggested that a few more would be necessary.  If anyone is
interested in reading my original message, and possibly
even commenting on it, I have archived it at 

	Http://Www.Rhul.Ac.Uk/Staff/Chaa006/XTML/

Philip Taylor, RHBNC

Received on Monday, 12 May 2003 13:45:41 UTC