Re: Toward Graceful Deployment of Tables

Jon_Bosak@Novell.COM
Wed, 15 Mar 1995 11:55:05 +0800

> After all, (layout) tags are just tags, it's the content that really
> matters.

Um... No. Wrong. It's not that simple. Sorry.

> This is the basis why lynx etc., decent/friendly non-table browsers can
> deal with my examples gracefully, because they can conveniently ignore any
> unrecognized tags and correctly interpret the remaining ones.

The fact that the HTML 2.0 spec was forced to grandfather in a bad
practice is hardly a license to make that practice the basis for a
future architecture. Inserting all kinds of garbage into the data
stream on the principle that browsers should just ignore what they
can't handle is a bad idea on the face of it. Please imagine what
this argument would look like if translated to compiler design,
database design, or any other kind of computer processing that expects
structured input.

Jon

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