Re: strategy for HTML spec?
Thomas A. Fine <fine@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 15:16:26 -0500
From: Thomas A. Fine <fine@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Message-id: <9301132016.AA21656@soccer.cis.ohio-state.edu>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Re: strategy for HTML spec?
X-Mailer: Perl Mail System v1.1
>[begin bitching and moaning...]
>
>Also, I am frustrated that noone else seems willing to look
>closely at SGML at all. The SGMLs parser makes it easy to
>try stuff out, and comp.text.sgml is a great place to learn
>a lot of stuff, but none of the other implementors have
>bothered to try them out.
[begin excuses]
Unfortunately, My job only permits me a couple of hours a day on this
project, and that includes coming up with local documentation.
[end excuses]
But you're right.
I personally believe this is one of the most important projects going
on on the internet right now. I think you're doing a wonderful job,
getting things right, dealing with everybody's (like mine) annoying
criticism, etc. But your doing this thing right, and I like it.
So how about a constructive idea? I won't be able to implement this
until three weeks from now since I'm bouncing to two different
conferences for the next two weeks, but:
I could easily write a robot which would roam around the Web (perhaps
stochastically?), and verify the html, using sgmls. Then, whenever
I come across something that's non-compliant, I could automatically
send mail to wwwmaster@sitename. No one would have to annoy anyone else
about whether or not they've verified their HTML; a program would annoy
them automatically.
All we have to do is agree to set up the wwwmaster aliases. (In the
event of bounce-o-grams, we could always annoy the postmaster, or
failing that, root.)
This would also be a good chance to map out the entire Web. Anyone
know any good algorithms for drawing arbitrary directed graphs with
no overlap? Which reminds me, a good directed graph is the right way
to implement a history mechanism. Somebody want to take a crack at
it?
tom