Re: Proposal: [WWW] Seperate site and document

Luca Del Re wrote:
>
> Hi everyone!
>
> In a discussion on a German board (about the future of XHTML), an user 
> asked
> for the seperation between navigation and the proper document.
> The others told him that there's always been a possibilty for this:
> Framesets. Well, as you should know, frames have a lot of problems, that
> make them inadequate.
>
> I had another idea: Why not embed the XHTML in a "Site Description 
> Language"
> document? So I wrote the following piece of code:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" ?>
> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" 
> href=http://example.org/mysite/style.css ?>
> <sdl xmlns="http://example.org/SDL"
> xmlns:h = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
> xmlns:f = "http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms"
> xmlns:l = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
> <site>
> <title>John Doe Ltd.</title>
> <subtitle>Since 1950</subtitle>
> <toc>
>  <tocnode
>    l:href="http://example.org/mysite/index.sdl"
>    title="Home">
>   <tocnode
>    l:href="http://example.org/mysite/services.sdl"
>    title="Our services">
>   <tocnode
>    l:href="http://example.org/mysite/service1.sdl"
>    title="Furniture" />
>    <tocnode
>    l:href="http://example.org/mysite/service2.sdl"
>    title="Kitchen equipment" />
>   </tocnode>
>  </tocnode>
> </toc>
>  <searchform>
>   <f:model>
>     <f:submission
>       action="http://example.org/mysite/search.sdl"
>       method="post" id="s" />
>    </f:model>
>    <f:input ref="searchterm"><f:label>Search site</f:label></f:input>
>    <f:submit submission="s"><f:label>OK</f:label></f:submit>
>  </searchform>
> </site>
> <document>
>   <h:html>
>    <h:head>
>     <h:title>Home</h:title>
>    </h:head>
>    <h:body>
>     <h:h1>Welcome</h:h1>
>     <h:p>John Doe Ltd. is a company...</h:p>
>    </h:body>
>   </h:html>
> </document>
> </sdl>
>
> The benefit:
> Document and site are seperated. The site properties are
> semantically marked up.
>
> But there are some disadvantages:
> The user complained that there's still traffic caused by the 
> navigation. He
> wanted it to be seperated physically, so that the UA may cache it. Also
> older UAs that don't interprete this new language could not access the 
> whole
> site.
>
> The user was right. After a bit of thinking I had another idea: 
> templating.
>
> How does this work?
> Our new SDL language can be used to create templates. This is an example:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" ?>
> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css"
> href=http://example.org/mysite/sdl-style.css" ?>
> <?sdl-templating is-template="true" ?>
>
> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" 
> href=http://example.org/mysite/style.css ?>
> <sdl xmlns="http://example.org/SDL"
> xmlns:l = http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
> xmlns:f = "http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms">
> <site>
>  <title>John Doe Ltd.</title>
>  <subtitle>Since 1950</subtitle>
>  <!-- It's the same as above, the table of contents the searchform,
> etc. -->
> </site>
> <document />
> </sdl>
>
> The difference: A processing instruction that indicates wheter this SDL
> document is a template, and an empty document element. It will be 
> replaced
> by the parser.
>
> So what happens now when we request the index.xhtml?
> The server responds with an ordinary XHTML document (without 
> navigation) and
> adds the following HTTP header:
>
> X-SDL-Template-Location: http://example.org/mysite/template.sdl
>
> The browser requests the template and inserts the proper document
> (index.xhtml) into the document element. (Of course only if it's XML. If
> not,
> the parser may add a sample XHTML document with object element or so).
>
> Benefits:
> - Compatible with older browser
> - Navigation can be cached
> - Template may be different (context sensitive)
>
> Disadvantage: Older browser receive a document without navigation...
>
> What do you think about this? This would change the way of organizing
> webpages.
> Navigations can be replaced very easy, and the document is independent 
> from
> the site.
>
> I look forward to your comments
>
> Regards
> Luca Del Re
>
> PS: I know this would fit better to WWW Distributed Indexing and 
> Searching
> information, but the www-disw mailing list seems to be abandoned and 
> is full
> of spam, so I hope you apologize that I posted this here :)
>
>
>
>
Interesting.

You can already get quite similar results using html:link (think 
section, index, et al.), an A9 SiteInfo (albeit with toolbar plugin 
thingy), and OpenSearch Description. A 'real' standard (as in, 
encouraged to be natively supported by user agents) might be nice though.

Greetings,

ACJ

Received on Sunday, 20 January 2008 10:27:54 UTC