Re: Hot Metal and HTML

Murray Maloney <murray@oclc.org>
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 94 11:50:30 EDT
Message-id: <9406141104.aa08247@dali.scocan.sco.COM>
Reply-To: html-ig@oclc.org
Originator: html-ig@oclc.org
Sender: html-ig@oclc.org
Precedence: bulk
From: Murray Maloney <murray@oclc.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <html-ig@oclc.org>
Subject: Re: Hot Metal and HTML
X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
X-Comment: HTML Implementation Group
> 
> > 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. 
> 
> I would be very surprised indeed if _any_ DTD would allow import of
> the 95% rubbish masquerading as HTML currently on the web.

Actually, it wouldn't be that hard to develop a DTD to handle
just about anything that you might throw at it, assuming that
you did two things:

	1) define all content models as ANY
	2) define an import script that mapped
	   any unknown tags to a spare tag that
	   was used for just that purpose.

However, it wouldn't be all that helpful to use such a DTD,
because it would simply allow yout to create more rubbish.
Albeit, with no illegal elements (tags).
> 
> > Apparently we can expect SoftQuad to release an update with 
> > a much more liberal and forgiving DTD sometime soon.
> 
> Yuri did forward me a HoTMetaL dtd which he said was "more forgiving".
> I'll dig it out and see how it works.
> 
> ///Peter