Re: SGML Capacities

Gavin Nicol ([email protected])
Fri, 2 Jun 1995 21:46:26 -0400


>In the case of a scripting extension to the Web (such as Java),
>what you really need is an arbitrary-length URI, in order to specify
>both the location of the script and the initialization data that
>should be passed to this invocation; e.g.
>
> http://www/java/script.class#x=1;y=2;name=hello-world;...

Oh, so you've come to agree with my original proposal for the Java
group then ;-)

Actually, the URI is a terrible place to put such data, for vrious
reasons, including the SGML limits, and multilingual issues. I
suggested using the URI as a quick hack until something better could
be designed.

I've since come to think that for Java et al., maybe the best thing
(in HTTP) would be a GET request with the HTTP request containing a
message body. This would give MIME-ish control over the structure of
the initialization data etc.

In addition, I think that in the face of scripting, HyTime concepts
become increasingly important. Whay say I want to invoke the animated
algorithm examples, but I want to start displaying them after they've
completed 100 cycles, or to just take a snapshot?