[6320] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: CENTER element [Was: Netscape & New HTML]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bert Bos)
Tue Oct 25 14:03:53 1994
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 1994 19:01:18 +0100
Errors-To: postmaster@www0.cern.ch
Errors-To: postmaster@www0.cern.ch
Reply-To: bert@let.rug.nl
From: Bert Bos <bert@let.rug.nl>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>
I'll vote against CENTER, but DIVISION has some merit.
Introducing a new element with no other function than to center text
seems rather a step backwards. HTML should try to capture the
underlying *function* of the text that is to be centered:
- if it is a quote, use QUOTE
- if it is an abstract, use ABSTRACT
- if it is a note, use NOTE
- if it is a title use H*
- if it is a formula, use MATH
Of course, there will always be situations where none of the above
fits. Therefore, there has to be some general `fallback' element.
Like the first three above -- and like Joe English proposed -- it
should be an element that contains other elements (i.c. P's), but not
text. Note that the %pextra feature is of no help here.
However, I don't like the name DIVISION, it suggests a much larger
chunk of text and it can easily be confused with DIV*. How about
DISPLAY?
And, to add another attribute to the proposal: how about ROLE:
<!element DISPLAY (P*) -- other displayed text -->
<!attlist DISPLAY
-- common attributes --
ID ID #IMPLIED -- link destination --
CHARSET CDATA #IMPLIED -- eg "ISO-2022-JP" for japanese --
ALIGN (dontcare|left|center|right) dontcare -- formatting hint --
-- role examples: screendump, example-sentence, code --
ROLE CDATA #IMPLIED -- the function of this element -->
This would preserve the capability of HTML to be used as a database,
instead of as a PDL.
Bert
PS. Shouldn't this discussion be on www-html?
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