Perhaps a useful tool?
yuri@oclc.org
Date: Sat, 18 Jun 94 08:43:59 EDT
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From: yuri@oclc.org
To: Multiple recipients of list <html-ig@oclc.org>
Subject: Perhaps a useful tool?
X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
X-Comment: HTML Implementation Group
I've been travelling and unable to take part in the previous conversations.
However, I would like to state SoftQuad's position with regards to
HoTMetaL and its ability to read/not-read HTML files:
HoTMetaL is a kind of gift. Perhaps it will do the company some good;
perhaps it will turn out to be something we've done for free. That's
fine.
But it is no gift at all if it's not useful to people. And, from
the point of view of my own feelings, it will be particularly valuable
in the long run ONLY IF it also contributes to the creation of
structured and therefore optimally reusable files.
That having been said, SoftQuad is happy to make HoTMetaL available
with whatever DTD(s) are deemed by the Web community to be most
useful. I'm hoping that this maillist and other interested individuals
will provide a forum in which, while you/we work out useful DTD
structures, by coincidence, those structures are showing up in
HoTMetaL, just as they will show up in browsers.
If, for example, it seemed useful to have a version of HoTMetaL which
treated <P> as a separator instead of a start-tag for a container, we
can construct mechanisms in an SGML DTD to allow that to work in our
software.
Our plan is to make new versions of the DTD for HoTMetaL available as
necessary and in response to the response we get. For example, we feel
that the current state of HTML2.0 is such that it would be useful to
make available to HoTMetaL users -- probably with the defaults set just
as they are in the current version. (That is, without Prescriptive or
Proposed capabilities.) We will also ship a slightly looser version
of the graft DTD that came with the first shipment. (It uses elements
from HTML 2.0 but with more of a restricted structure, that is, the
structure of a recent version of HTMLplus.)
Any way, this is longer than I'd intended, but I want to make it
absolutely clear that SoftQuad and HoTMetaL is here to be helpful
with respect to markup, not to hinder anything.