Re: Adding new tags (was: Redefining...)

Bert Bos ([email protected])
Mon, 13 Jun 1994 18:12:23 +0200 (METDST)


TBL writes:
|> | <render tag="COMMENT" style="i">
|> | <render tag="FUNCTION" style="b,u">
[...]
|> Now the remaining question is: what will/should browsers do when they
|> encounter a RENDER tag for an undeclared element? A good guess might
|> be to simply assume the syntax is the same as for the EM tag.
|
|So are we assuming full DTD parsing is mandatory for all HTML+
|clients of 3.0+? If so, you are getting quite bogged down in SGML

No, the answer that I gave ("assume the *syntax* of the EM element"),
was meant to express my intuition that browsers do *not* need to parse
the DTD. In most (all?) cases the content model for the new elements
will be a subset of that of the EM element.

|and to think that the rebndering will be defined by simply the
|EM attributes is simpliistic. To reall describe the rendering,
|you have to cope with
|
[fancy style description omitted]
|
|I exagerate but I have found style sheets need more power,
|and it seems RENDER should hook into style sheet langauge.

I'm not so sure. Style sheets should indeed be able to specify the
layout in as much detail as your example, but RENDER is perhaps better
kept as a hint, specifically for use when there is no style sheet.

Style sheets should have only a single point of attachment, probably a
LINK tag in the HEAD. All other relations between the text and the
style are given by pointers from the style sheet into the text, and
never the other way round.

Bert

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