Re: HTML2 spec (mostly typos)

"Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@oclc.org>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 94 15:24:51 EDT
Message-id: <9407191924.AA01901@ulua.hal.com>
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From: "Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@oclc.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <html-ig@oclc.org>
Subject: Re: HTML2 spec (mostly typos) 
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In message <199407191856.AA19789@willow.tc.cornell.edu>, Jim Davis writes:
>Dan and Tim- the HTML 2.0 spec is magnificent.

Ahh... sucking up to the editors, huh? Well... I guess it
works sometimes...

>  I have spotted a few
>bugs, almost all of them typos or formatting errors in the HTML or in
>the PostScript generated from the HTML. (I would not mention this
>latter issue, but the PostScript is generally so beautiful and many
>people will use it as the primary reference.)

Yes... it is time to mess with editorial details. The whole doc
has undergone an editorial/stylistic revision (thanks to
Karen Muldrow here at HaL). For a preview
of the results, (still changing...) see:

	http://www.hal.com/products/sw/olias/Build-html/buhC2XBDmmF84aK.html

>1) The program you use to convert from HTML to PostScript has a few
>bugs, e.g. it follows DT content with a " ."

Yes. We're no longer doing it that way. We're now using the
OLIAS authoring environment (a set of internat tools that
supports a roughly DocBook based Frame/SGML authoring environment )

We generate the HTML from that now.

>2) It would be nice if the PostScript version had a title page also

Will do.


>4) Is it possible to change the DTD to be SHORTTAG NO?  Short tags
>are an abomination.

I wish. But then:

	<IMG src="xxx" ISMAP>

would be an error. So would <input type=text> and lots of other
commonly used idioms.


>7) Re titles.  I don't agree that titles longer than 64 characters
>should be considered "inappropriate".  It may well be that some
>browsers will be forced to truncate them, on the other hand those
>longer titles may prove quite useful to programs indexing the Web.  In
>general, why should the specification say anything about "appropriate
>use" of titles?  You don't tell people about appropriate graphic
>design, so why even mention length of titles?

Because we want to tell them what will "work" and what won't. If
you put a great big long title on your doc, it will likely get
truncated without notice on some browsers. Authors need to know
that.


>13) in Forms.html you have

Forms have been significantly revised, thanks to Paul Burchard (sp?).

>16) in Security.html you have
><P>Documents may be constructed whose visible contents mislead
>one to follow a link by to unsuitable 
>
>This is garbled syntax.

Yes. And it's pretty worthless info too. Would somebody please
submit an alternative? I'm about ready to go with Terry Allen's
suggestion and essentially punt the Security Issues section.

Dan