Re: Semantic Tagging in Web Objects
Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
From: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Message-id: <9402021815.AA11749@manuel.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Semantic Tagging in Web Objects
To: forman@cs.washington.edu
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 94 18:15:43 GMT
Cc: www-talk@www0.cern.ch
Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.36.1.1]
Content-Length: 1619
George Forman writes:
> But on the other hand, I think it'd be really useful if the HTML
> browser knew at least a few semantic tags. HTML already has the TITLE tag;
> you wouldn't think of taking that out. I propose adding AUTHOR, ABSTRACT,
> DATE, and VERSION.
The DTD already includes ABSTRACT to allow the overview of a document to
be shown in a distinct manner from the rest of the text. Authors often
use headers for this now, but this leads to unpredictable results.
Document bylines are handled with the familiar ADDRESS element.
Version and ownership etc. can be handled in a generic way using the
META element which appears in the document's head:
<!--
Servers should read the document head to generate HTTP headers
corresponding to META elements, e.g. if the document contains:
<meta name="Expires" value="Tue, 04 Dec 1993 21:29:02 GMT">
The server should include the HTTP date format header field:
Expires: Tue, 04 Dec 1993 21:29:02 GMT
Other likely names are "Created", "Owner" (a name) and
"Reply-To" (an email address)
-->
<!ELEMENT META - O EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST META
id ID #IMPLIED -- to allow meta info --
name CDATA #IMPLIED -- HTTP header e.g. "Expires" --
value CDATA #IMPLIED -- associated value -->
Another powerful approach is to extend the HTML+ DTD on a per document
basis and use the RENDER element to tell the browser how to render new
elements in terms of older ones. In fact, I really want to throw out
most of the existing semantic emphasis tags!
Dave Raggett