<OWNER> tag in head? and other things that would be nice...

germuska@antioch.acns.nwu.edu (Joe Germuska)
From: germuska@antioch.acns.nwu.edu (Joe Germuska)
Message-id: <9310191500.AA12920@antioch.acns.nwu.edu>
Subject: <OWNER> tag in head? and other things that would be nice...
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1993 10:00:28 -0500 (CDT)
Reply-To: j-germuska@nwu.edu (Joe Germuska)
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I am sure this has been talked about, but I don't see any answers...

It'd be nice to be able to easily contact the owner of a document you are
reading on the web... specifically, I was browsing GNN and wanted to
suggest a change to a reference to info I maintain; unfortunately, there
wasn't even a tag at the end of the page listing a contact (I know I could
find the address as soon as I really looked, but...).

But why shouldn't you just be able to fire a message off to the owner of
a document.  It seems like it'd be easy enough to declare a new tag that
would only be in the header of docs... <OWNER> seems best to me.  Really
cool browsers could then use that to automatically address mail, and
not-so-cool browsers could at least provide that information on demand.
Obviously, I think this info should be a legal e-mail address, although
maybe (don't know why) it should be a real name and a separate tag created
for a corresponding e-mail address...

Another direction I think would be quite useful would be the development of
HTTP "environment variables"...  work out a method so that servers can ask
clients for certain frequently useful information, such as the users e-mail
address, perhaps the user's snail mail address or shirt-size...  couldn't
it even be open-ended?  That is, if a client receives a request for an
undefined variable, it could ask, and add that variable to a .browserrc
type file...

As forms get more widely implemented, I think this would become quite
useful...

	Joe
(who's on the verge of actually getting paid to develop hypertext - yay!)

-- 
joe germuska | j-germuska@nwu.edu | +1 708 467 4456 | ACNS Northwestern Univ. 
       Instructional Technologies Group - Technical Support Services
"Everything is music." - Billy Higgins