Re: [VE][76] noindex

David Dorward wrote:

> On 25 Dec 2009, at 21:26, Mr 13 wrote:
>> Service marks <noindex> tag as undefined.
>
> … because it isn't part of HTML.

It depends on one's definition of "HTML". In practice, HTML is whatever is 
sent as HTML from servers to browsers and gets interpreted more or less 
sensibly. HTML in this sense predates all HTML specifications, and most of 
the HTML around does not conform to any HTML specification.

But certainly <noindex> isn't part of any published HTML specification.

> The ongoing work on the language defines constructs such as <nav>[1]
> which can be used by indexers in a similar way.

That's something completely different. Navigational elements might be 
treated as irrelevant in indexing, or they might not, but in any case the 
idea "don't index this" goes far beyond the issue of repetitive navigation.

Anyway, <noindex> is probably harmless (programs will either ignore it or 
use it in the intended meaning), and if you wish to use it validate your 
pages, then you have two choices:
a) ignore the error messages
b) use a DTD that allows the element, see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/own-dtd.html
(I haven't included <noindex> in my tagsoup DTD, but it's pretty trivial to 
add it, once you've decided whether you wish to "allow" it as inline 
element, or as block element, or as both.)

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ 

Received on Wednesday, 30 December 2009 16:59:29 UTC