Re: Virtual Pages

Dave_Raggett ([email protected])
Fri, 25 Feb 1994 13:26:57 --100


Peter Flyn writes:

> (I don't like the idea of hardcoding <P> numbers, but let it stand for
> the moment). What is going to be crucial for many applications is to
> have not only the stuff numbered locally, eg

> 3. Marketing aspects

> 3.1 text text text

> 3.2 ...

> but numbered _in context_, so that if this particular <div2> occurs
> within a <div1> numbered "4", it will appear

> 4.3 Marketing aspects

> 4.3.1 text text text

> 4.3.2 ...

> or at least, to have this structural-numerical framework retrievable,
> maybe in a structure window like some SGML editors do.

> Has anyone any pointers as to how we might achieve this?

The obvious approach is to use an element in the document head to
initialize the starting numbers. This could also be used to specify
that paragraphs or maybe just headers are to be numbered. That way
you wouldn't have to place an attribute on each <P> element.

e.g. <NUMBER FROM="4.7" WHICH="H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 P">

Where the which attribute is a namelist of tag names. The from
attribute also implies a context for DIVs in which the current node
fits as part of a larger document. The NUMBER element could be implicit
when following Subdocument links.

Dave Raggett