Re: Hot Metal and HTML

Murray Maloney <murray@oclc.org>
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 94 08:55:09 EDT
Message-id: <9406140833.aa07950@dali.scocan.sco.COM>
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From: Murray Maloney <murray@oclc.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <html-ig@oclc.org>
Subject: Re: Hot Metal and HTML
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> 
> > Dan has tried to show how we can move to containers for P, DT, and
> > still call it HTML.  Someone somewhere is wrong, as HoT MetaL
> > WON'T READ HTML and WON'T WRITE HTML.
> 
> What does Yuri say?

Yuri is not available right now.  I last heard from him as he
was packing to head off to a Seybold conference in Paris.
I think that he said that he would be back around June 23.

I have spoken briefly to someone at SoftQuad about this problem.
It appears that the DTD that was sent out with HoTMetal was bit
more rigorous than most information providers need at the moment.
While it is great for creating new HTML files, it is not so helpful
when it comes to importing existing material.  The two biggest 
problems seem to be:

	- Text not allowed between <H*> and other elements.
	  If you have used <P> or another block element
	  immediately after a heading, then you're ok.
	  If you go straight into text, the document won't parse.

	- If you have used tags which are not defined in the DTD,
	  then the document won't parse at all.  HoTMetaL simply
	  cannot cope with undeclared elements.

Apparently we can expect SoftQuad to release an update with 
a much more liberal and forgiving DTD sometime soon.
> 
> > * If the scheme doesn't work in theory, we scrap the containers for HTML,
> > and call everything with P as containers HTML+ which is incompatible,
> > and define text/htmlplus.  That's fine... a single jump to get things clean.
> 
> But the CERN dtd defined P as - O last year...

Paragraphs are not seperators.  Period.
> 
> ///Peter
>