>On the contrary, the <LINK> suggestion is a "solution" insofar as there
>is a "problem". It's important to remember that HTML is an SGML
>application: the operative concept is "document entity", i.e. everything
>between <HTML> and </HTML>[*]. The "abstraction" is merely a roundabout way
>of saying that rendering the document entity on certain devices could
>require a scrolling (or paging) capability in these devices: but the
>document entity *itself* carries no such assumption. Moreover, you don't
>have to store the document entity in a file: you could even generate it
>on the fly programmatically -- even from a single file:-)
I don't see where it addresses the problem that Eric posed--that
being the attachment of HTML to the "scrollable display" abstraction.
The current implementation, even though it's supposedly based on a
documentation language (SGML), has no support for non-scrollable page
definition. What he's suggesting, and I agree, is that we disengage the
"coincidental" tie between the representation (HTML) and the abstraction
(scrollable displays) by carefuly and minimally extending the language
to support a more general abstraction (paper).
This would extend the usefulness of HTML to include applications
where a document needs to be available in both srollable (WWW) and
non-scrollable (paper) versions with one source file (HTML) without the
author having to mainatain multiple source versions of the same document.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
* BearHeart / Bill Weinman
* [email protected] * * http://www.bearnet.com/ *
* Author of The CGI Book: * http://www.bearnet.com/cgibook/ *
* 'Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers. --Shakespeare