Re: Standardizing new HTML features

"Tony Johnson (415) 926 2278" <TONYJ@scs.slac.stanford.edu>
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1993 09:56 PDT
From: "Tony Johnson (415) 926 2278" <TONYJ@scs.slac.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: Standardizing new HTML features
To: dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Message-id: <6AA755ACB860012C@SCS.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>
X-Envelope-To: www-talk@nxoc01.CERN.CH
X-Vms-To: IN%"dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com"
X-Vms-Cc: TONYJ, in%"www-talk@nxoc01.CERN.CH"
Dave Raggett writes:

>In a recent phone conversation, Tim Berners-Lee suggested I take over editing
>a new DTD for extensions to the current HTML spec. Don't get worried - the
>existing HTML tags will continue unchanged.

Excellent! One area I would like to see clearly documented is what types of 
nesting of tags is legal, I have not found it clearly documented in the 
existing HTML documentation (of course maybe I didn't follow the right link).

For example, which of the following are legal/supported/encouraged HTML??

<a href=x>The <h1>Link</h1></a>
<a href=x>The <b>link</b></a>    
<b><i><e>Weird</e></i></b>     etc. etc. etc....

Of course one answer is that browsers should do their best with whatever they 
get....but I think in the interest of portability (and of something that works 
fine with ine browser working equally well with another one) it would be better 
to document what things are required to be supported. It would also be useful 
for browsers to have a -noextentensions flag (or some moral equivalent) under 
which they flag anything other than the strictly supported constructs to aid 
people in writing portable HTML. 

Tony