I do too. I thought I remembered seeing that exact thing in an early
draft of HTML+ but maybe I was dreaming. A couple of comments:
1) I feel it should be in the <BODY>, as <HEAD> should be reserved for
meta-information that applications might want to grab quickly using the
HEAD method (like LINK relationships, title and author, etc.). I know
you want it in the HEAD for speed reasons, since setting the color of the
page has to be done before any rendering of text in most screen
widgets, and redrawing the page when it hits this new tag would be
inelegant - hmm.
2) If the background bitmap is really simple, like a single color or 4 dots
2x2, allow the use of binary or hex bits to designate the color so a separate
fetch of a really small image isn't needed. I.e. <BACKGND
pat="0x3e32a55f"> or something.
3) The big question will be, is this a structural object or an attribute
better suited for style-sheets? I'd lean towards the former, as I think
this is similar in function to <HR>. Perhaps it would be more in the
SGML spirit if instead of a bitstring like I suggested above, more general
names were given to the possible colors, and it was left up to the
browser to render that color best.
Brian
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