Re: COMPOSITE (was Re: APPLET = FIG)

Brian Behlendorf (brian@organic.com)
Tue, 6 Jun 95 04:34:12 EDT

On Mon, 5 Jun 1995, Paul Burchard wrote:
> Brian Behlendorf <brian@organic.com>
> > On Mon, 5 Jun 1995, James C Deikun wrote:
> [...scripting discussion deleted...]
> >
> > > <LINK> could serve a
> > > similar purpose.
> >
> > Conceivably, but what would the REL values be, and what
> > would they mean? Would <LINK REL="input"
> > HREF="java.app"> mean to take this HTML page as input to
> > the script? Hmm, this would deal with the
> > script-controlling-multiple-places issue nicely.
>
> While I like <LINK REL=Script>, it's too global to be the general
> solution for scripting. Think about VRML, and it'll be especially
> clear that you want be able to take advantage of the hierarchical
> document structure and bind the script to a subdocument.

Absolutely... but I think you'd want to be able to do it without
explicitly marking that element you want to modify/animate in the text
itself, which is why a call for a new tag doesn't ring true to me. There
are several ways of marking up HTML so it could be subaddressed using the
ID and CLASS attributes on most tags in HTML 3. If there's a standard way
of referring to "All paragraphs in CLASS 'foo'" or "the <FIG> with ID
'bar'" in HTML 3, then couldn't that be used by the script to determine
both input data and output areas? The style sheet group is working on a
syntax for addressing these types of elements, so perhaps a solution can
come from there. In fact style sheets might provide the general solution:
style sheets will let one say, for example "make all H1's render in 12
point purple helvetica". Now *I'd* like a mechanism to say "make all H1's
render according to my NeonSign.app application".

I get the feeling that plugging turing machines and document languages
together isn't going to be easy; that a binding will have to be forged
for each format separately, though ideally in the same spirit and with
the same general feature sets. I think I slept in the day this was
discussed in class :)

Brian

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