Re: Last Call: Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 to Proposed Standard

Christopher R. Maden (crm@ebt.com)
Wed, 26 Jul 95 10:33:45 EDT

Roy Fielding wrote:
> In Section 5.7.3 (Anchor), the draft correctly states that
>
> The REL attribute gives the relationship(s) described by the
> hyperlink. The value is a whitespace separated list of
> relationship names.
>
> whereas, in Section 9.1 (HTML DTD), the draft incorrectly defines
[...]
> <!ENTITY % linkExtraAttributes
> "REL %linkType #IMPLIED

Where %linkType is "NAME". That doesn't allow for any whitespace at
all, but:

[...]
> The correct definition for this feature is:
[...]
> <!ENTITY % linkExtraAttributes
> "REL NAMES #IMPLIED
[...]

That's not quite right either. Production [40] of ISO 8879 allowes a
name token list to be a list of names separated by SPACE, usually
character 32. This excludes line breaks, tabs, and other whitespace.
I think CDATA might be a better choice, as it would allow more
flexibility for casual authors. If I'm using emacs with auto-fill-
mode to author my HTML, and it line wraps a NAMES attribute value, my
HTML is now invalid. (Of course, psgml wouldn't let that happen,
but...)

-Chris

-- 
Christopher R. Maden     Electronic Book Technologies, Inc.
Applications Consultant  One Richmond Square
http://www.ebt.com/      Providence, Rhode Island 02906 USA
+1.401.421.9550 (voice)  crm@ebt.com  +1.401.521.2030 (fax)