Re: Link info outside doc

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From: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Message-id: <9307011031.AA13316@manuel.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Link info outside doc
To: terry@ora.com
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 93 11:31:57 BST
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.36.1.1]
Status: RO

Terry,

> I'd like to be able to provide a list of the docs in order, then
> in each doc just specify that it should have a NEXT and PREVIOUS
> link.  Then the browser can refer to the list of files and find
> the right URL.  If I want to change the order I can reorder the
> list of docs, without having to go into every file and change
> the URLs.  

> Is there a way to do this in HTML+ that I have missed?

Yes - (but thats my fault :-)

The simplest way is to use a LINK element at the start of each doc
which indicates the parent doc. The parent doc uses the GROUP tag
to enclose a sequence of links to the children.

Unfortunately, I have yet to work out some of the details, like
how the browser knows to show NEXT and PREVIOUS toolbar buttons.
This could be via extending the LINK tag or with a new tag.

Note that you can use the GROUP tag to define nested hierarchies,
so the pointer from the child to the parent needs to indicate its
position in the hierarchy, e.g. via a "#" suffix and id on the URL.

In some cases, when a given document occurs in several independent
such lists, you can't provide an explicit pointer to the parent group.
In this case the link will have to be defined implicitly by virtue of
how the user navigates to the document. The details of how this might
work are all a bit hazy at this stage ...

Dave

p.s. The RFC for HTML+ I am currently writing will make the basic
     ideas a lot clearer.