2.0 is (I believe) supposed to be a standardization of current practice -
I don't know what the plan is for 2.x, but I feel if the proposed element
isn't in any browser currently it should be proposed for includion into 3.0.
> I hope I sent this to the right place. If not, sorry for wasting your time.
>
> These are cosmetic document formatting features.
>
> 1. Superscript and subscript
> 2. Specifiable page background colour
I thought HTML 3.0 had a "background bitmap" element, where you can
specify a bitmap of arbitrary size to be tiled behind the document elements,
but I can't find it now. Dave? I personally really like the idea,
especially if one could include the info for that bitmap in the HTML doc
itself so a separate request isn't necessary.
> 3. JPEG inline graphics
This shouldn't be part of any language spec, and a quick look at the 2.0
spec on hal.com indicates that there is nothing that says inlining a JPEG
would be wrong. It would be hard for a parser to know that straight off
anyways - I could name a GIF foo.jpg and as along as its mime type was
image/gif it could be rendered as a GIF. NetScape lets you inline JPEG's,
and Emacs-W3 and Chimera let you inline any arbitrary object you expect
your audience has rendering tools for (I think). The spec does say that
IMG can't be used for inlining HTML, which is fine I suppose - though I'd
really like to be able to do that too.
This leads to something I've been thinking about recently, and recent
discussions here indicating trouble over defining "user agent" reinforce
a need for this - what about setting formal specs for web browsers?
I.e., browsers that can do this-and-this are Level 1 Web User Agents,
and those that also do this-and-this are Level 2, etc. Web browsers
that pass could get the W3O Seal of Approval or something... it's
something we've certainly been running into in our adventures.
(check out http://www.hotwired.com/browsers.html)
Brian
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brian@hotwired.com brian@hyperreal.com http://www.hotwired.com/Staff/brian/