Re: HTML3 body tag
Gavin Nicol (gtn@ebt.com)
Wed, 8 Mar 1995 08:20:40 -0500
>>
>> > <!ENTITY foobar SYSTEM "http://foo.com/bar.html.inc">
>> >
>> > &foobar;
>>
>> Is preferrable to
>>
>> > <DL> ....
>> > <DT> foobar
>> > <DD> <INCLUDE ID=foobar NAME="foobar" HREF="http://foo.com/bar.html.inc"
>> > REL="subdoc" REV="glossary"
>> > TITLE="The definition of foobar is...">
>>
>> because the parser can validate the former, but not the latter.
>>
>
>More accurately, the parser could parse the SYSTEM value in the
>ENTITY declaration, but not the HREF value. Given that we
>have accepted that limitation for <A> and <LINK>, I don't see
>this as a strong argument. Are you suggesting that <A> and <LINK>
>syntax must be changed?
Well, <A> and <LINK> in effect cause a new document to be retrieved,
whereas <INCLUDE> is just loading in text (unless I am totally
mistaken). By using entities, the standard SGML mechanisms can be
used, and one can validate the document in the normal SGML manner
(using the entity manager mechanism feeding the parser), whereas
<INCLUDE> forces some parsing dependencies into the entity manager
(this is kind of like requiring a parser to understand PI's). Using
<INCLUDE> will make it harder to use standard SGML tools...