- From: Toby A Inkster <tobyink@goddamn.co.uk>
- Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 19:36:24 +0100
- To: "Philip TAYLOR [PC87S/O-XP]" <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
- Message-ID: <20030512183623.GA22524@ophelia.goddamn.co.uk>
On Mon, May 12, 2003 at 06:44:40PM +0100, Philip TAYLOR [PC87S/O-XP] wrote:
| 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/
Interestingly, I also looked at a minimal XHTML a couple of months ago,
although my approach is somewhat different. My proposition is:
1. Create a "Maximal XHTML" markup language, which should be well-formed
XML. Regular XHTML should be a subset opf Maximal XHTML. Such a markup
language would also include additional semantic elements that were
rejected from XHTML as being too specific and possibly one or two
presentational elements. It could possibly allow SVG, MathML, etc to
come into play as well.
2. Create a "Minimal XHTML" language, a proper subset of XHTML, so that
any valid Minimal XHTML document is a valid XHTML document. Minimal
XHTML would consist entirely of the following elements and listed
attributes. No other attributes or elements would be permissable. Some
attributes are limited in the values they can take, as per below.
<html>
dir
<head>
<title>
<link>
rel=next,prev,parent,start,end,contents,index,appendix,alternate
href
<meta>
name
scheme
<body>
<section>
id
class=introduction,conclusion,chapter,subchapter,example
<h>
<p>
id
<quote>
cite
<em>
<code>
<address>
<abbr>
<l>
<a>
href
type
<ol>,<ul>
id
<li>
id
href
<table>
summary
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
colspan,rowspan
for
abbr
<tbody>
<td>
colspan,rowspan
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td>
colspan,rowspan
xml:lang and title can be used for any element where it is allowed in
XHTML.
Note that minimal XHTML contains no presentational elements, including
no opportunity to specify a style sheet (adding one in by PIs would be
not allowed). Presentation is entirely down to the user.
It contains a rich linking structure through <link> -- the encouraged
machanism for navigational linking -- and <a>.
Note also that there is no method of embedding images. If an image must
be referenced, you must just link to it, using <a> or <link>.
Min-XHTML would be easy to implement by user agents as there is no
styling, no scripting, no embedding and very few elements. It would be
accessible because there is very little you can do to make a min-XHTML
document inaccessible!
--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS | mailto:tobyink@goddamn.co.uk | pgp:0x6A2A7D39
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Received on Monday, 12 May 2003 14:36:36 UTC