Re: Comments URI Proposal

On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, George Olsen wrote:
 
> What I, and I believe Todd and Susan, are proposing is something that's
> not quite a traditional colophon, which as you've indicated, could be done
> simply by defining a class of a <DIV> tag. What I'm talking about is the
> ability to link to *external* comment files. To quote Susan's example:
> 
> >/* COMMENTS <URL:http://www.example.com/css/comments.htm> */

Well the way I look at it is that these comments will be read by two
classes of people. 1) The Authors, who would therefore do best to include
the comment in comment /* tags */, and 2) experts reading other peoples'
sources. An external UA's browser would never download the comment file
itself, so you would always have to do that manually anyway!
If you want to include a link to a comment file, what is wrong with
just quoting the URL? As in...

/* detailed comments are at http://www.example.com/css/comments.htm */

What would an actual link construct achieve? My editor (notepad.exe)
wouldn't follow them. When I need to say "this is a workaround!" it is
certainly easier to say that next to the CSS rule itself...

> My understanding of Todd's proposal (see below) was that he was proposing a
> similarly "hidden" set of comments:
> 
> >I'd also propose pseudo-standardizing the "colophon" class for HTML
> >divisions, which would contain technical and other notes about the formal
> >construction of the site. Its display property would generally be set to
> >"none" initially, but users could choose to view it by setting its display
> >property to "block", and perhaps its position to 0,0 in a personal
> >stylesheet.

The way I read that is exactly the same as what I described in my last
message. <DIV CLASS=colophon> some comments </DIV>

> As I said earlier, this would be useful for including technical details
> about the site (for example, information that would help with site
> maintenance) without having to put them in the file itself.

I can't see how a colophon class DIV would be in another file. If you wish
to link to an external comment file, do what I do - have a link to the
site's README.TXT file at the bottom. Using a straight forward <A
HREF="">. No need for anything fancy!


-- 
Ian Hickson

Received on Thursday, 5 March 1998 08:00:16 UTC