Re: SGML objects

Steve Heaney <Steve.Heaney@delft.sgp.slb.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1993 20:52:53 +0200
From: Steve Heaney <Steve.Heaney@delft.sgp.slb.com>
Message-id: <199308131852.AA16962@mordred.delft.sgp.slb.com>
To: dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com
Subject: Re: SGML objects
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Status: RO
> From daemon@nxoc01.cern.ch Fri Aug 13 18:59:57 1993
> From: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>

Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com> writes:

> Jay says:
> 
> > Speaking of sections, your point is well taken about HTML missing chances
> > to define structure, especially with sectioning tags.  Could HTML+ define
> > an <H> tag, which is a container?  Doesn't sound hard to implement, just
> > incremement and decrement a level counter and do the same thing as
> > explicit tags of that level.  Browsers can choose a threshold beyond
> > which formatting doesn't change.
> 
> HTML+ does indeed provide support for hierarchical containers via the
> "GROUP" element. This allows such hierarchies to span arbitrary numbers
> of nodes spread all over the world (thanks Tony). The element includes
> a role attribute to indicate the type of container, chapter, section, ...
> 
> Lou's TEI DTD forces people to define headers in strict order, e.g.
> H1 H3 H2 is illegal as H3 is out of sequence. I think this is unnecessarily
> strict for our purposes.
> 
> Dave Raggett
> 

I hoped that the H1-Hn tags can be junked in favour of a single container 
element with the nesting depth of this element being determined by the 
browser, in order that the formating would reflect the depth of nesting.

I have seen it suggested that by using this scheme, in order to format a (lets 
call it) meta-document which spanned several files and/or nodes, all files 
would need to be retrieved, which would be an unnacceptable overhead.

I do not understand this argument (the need to retrieve all the sub-documents).
Would somebody be good enough to explain it to me because its bugging me, and 
introducing a single <header> or <group> would seem to make sense.

I would have thought that because all tags are (or can be) paired that one 
part of a meta-document (what I called a sub-document) could be formatted 
sensibly in isolation to its other parts.

Steve.