Re: progress on HTML 2.0 reconstruction

Paul Burchard (burchard@horizon.math.utah.edu)
Mon, 27 Mar 95 17:21:27 EST

Some suggestions on the 02a draft (one of substance):

* References to defunct HaL pages, and perhaps also obsolescent CERN
pages, should probably be redirected to W3C; see:

Section 1.1, p.5 -- HTML spec online
Section 1.3, p.6 -- HTTP spec
Section 1.3, p.7 -- URL spec; WWW guide
Section 15, p.53 -- various refs to CERN

There are also some FORM examples which use hal.com but I guess
that's OK.

* Forms stuff:

Section 11.2, p.30-31 -- nested lists in spec got garbled during
reformatting; the entries "CHECKBOX" thru "TEXT" are not attributes
of the INPUT element, but rather possible values of the "TYPE"
attribute, and should form a sublist under TYPE.

Section C.7.2, p.61 -- FORM example should have a SUBMIT button.

Section 11.1, p.29 -- a suggestion ... my note about which values are
returned from a FORM is not very clear; I think I was trying too hard
to capture existing mal-practice. Perhaps we should use a variation
on Dave Raggett's wording from HTML3.

I am suggesting replacing the sentence:

"Elements capable of displaying a textual or numerical value will
return a name/value pair even when they receive no explicit user
input."

with:

"Fields with null values may be omitted from the returned list of
name/value pairs, whereas those with non-null values should be
included (even if the value was not altered by the user). In
particular, unselected radio buttons and checkboxes should be
excluded from the contents list."

Admittedly, this is not saying the same thing. It allows
textual/numerical fields that happen to be blank (whether by default
or through user action) not to return a name/value pair. This could
potentially cause problems for some CGI programs that expect to find
particular input fields in the POST data whether or not they are
blank. But I think Dave's rule provides a clearer "growth path"...

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Paul Burchard <burchard@math.utah.edu>
``I'm still learning how to count backwards from infinity...''
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