Do we really care about levels?
"Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@hal.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 94 11:56:17 EDT
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From: "Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@hal.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <html-wg@oclc.org>
Subject: Do we really care about levels?
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In message <199409241753.KAA17065@rock>, Terry Allen writes:
> I like the explanation that the html-0.dtd tells authors
> what they ought to do to reach all audiences through
> all interfaces, but then this is really a DTD for writers,
> and not for use by browser developers seeking to develop
> Level 0 compliance---what does it mean to tell them that
> they can count on ALT being there (it's REQUIRED, after
> all) when they really can't? anyway ...
The alternative is to take IMG out of level 0. I suppose that matches
current practice, in that folks that want to reach text-based
consumers actually maintain separate document trees.
Hmmm... this is exactly the kind of thing I want to be able to
automate. Currently, the Commercenet stuff says "Click _here_ for a
text-based version of our documents." Their server should be
_able_ to detect the capapilities of the browser and deliver
appropriate documents, without the intervention of the user. That's
the whole point of format negociation.
This is really getting nasty: what level of browser in lynx? It does
forms and highlighting, but it doesn't do images. This suggests that in
stead of:
Accept: text/html; level=2
the more appropriate design is:
Accept: text/html; highlighting=yes; forms=yes; images=no
This starts to look like more cost than benefits. Hmmm...
So how do we gracefully deploy changes in HTML?
Dan