Re: HTML todo list

Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 18:28:58 +0100
From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>
Message-id: <9301121728.AA01295@www3.cern.ch>
To: Dan Connolly <connolly@pixel.convex.com>
Subject: Re: HTML todo list
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Reply-To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch



>  Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 22:36:43 CST
>  From: Dan Connolly <connolly@pixel.convex.com>
>  

...
>  1. My dictionary lists "markup" as a word, not mark-up.

Done.

>  In http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Bugs.html
>  2. The PLAINTEXT situation should be logged as a bug against
>  the server. PLAINTEXT is deprecated.

Done.  There are many other servers like that. We cannot really
force them to convert to XMP when HTTP2 is round the corner.
I shall fix the basic server anyway.

>  In http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/FAQ/List.html
>  4. HTML should support QUESTION and RESPONSE elements to
>  support converting USENET FAQ's to HTML

Not sure about that one. Ther are several ways of mapping FAQs onto  
HTML as it is ... I would prefer to see for example a MENU of  
questions, each linked to the answer in a separate document which had  
its question as for example a H1 heading and TITLE.

>  In http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Provider/ShellScript.html
>  5. PLAINTEXT is deprecated. Use PRE, and use a sed script
>  to change < to &#60, > to &#62, and & to &#38.

Fixed. I have put in a sed script txt2html to do the conversion.

>  6.  
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/HTMLGeneration/dir2html.txt
>  This thing doesn't quote attributes; it uses XMP in stead of
>  PRE with numeric character references.

Fixed.

>  7.  
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/HTMLGeneration/ls2html.awk.txt 

>  Quotes around HREFS, PLAINTEXT.
Fixed. No PLAINTEXT in this one, Quotes inserted.

>  8.  
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Implementation/asis.txt

I have put comments in the source but not fixed it.

>  

>  9. http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/HytelnetGate/src/htn2html.c
>  Uses HEADER in stead of HEAD.
Fixed
>  Quote HREFs.
Already done as far as I could find
>  Special character entities?
>  Yeah! It uses numeric character references already!
No -- it used named entities.  I'll leave it
>  In http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html
>  10. Mark-up again
Fixed.
>  11. This text seems out of place:[...]
Agreed  

>  12. Default text: this node seems to confuse lots of issues. I  
suggest
>  we get rid of it. The way to look at HTML is as a stream of data  
and
>  markup. Newlines are handled differently all over the place. It  
might
>  be reasonable to talk about how newlines are handled by the text
>  formatter, after they have been handed over from the SGML parser.


People writing SGML don't want to know about parser and formatters  
(an arbitray distinction which is very questionable in the definition  
of a DTD or SGML -- it is only relevant to the definition of the  
software interface to an SGML engine)

>  In http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/Tags.html
>  13. This text is out of place: 

>  Each tag starts
>  with a tag opener (a less than sign)
>  and ends with a tag closer (a greater
>  than sign).   Many tags have corresponding
>  closing tags which identical except
>  for a slash after the tag opener.


Take this as an informal intro not a spec.
Let's keep the spec in parallel.

>  It's more thoroughly >  In  
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/Elements/HEAD.html
>  14. These blurbs should probably quote their element declarations
>  from the DTD, in order to help folks learn to read the DTD.

Yes. And the DTD should be in PRE with links back to the blurbs.
I have started a //info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/HTML.dtd.html

....
That's where I got to

Tim