Chris Lilley:
|The solution for the application areas that have been under discussion
|is, of course, HTML 3.1, assuming it has enough expressive power to
|handle a single inline alpha as well as a fullblown displayed equation.
What Chris is saying, is, I think: for symbols and other
character-like images, there is a better solution than trying to get
all images with one HTTP request: use entities instead of images. He
mentions HTML 3.1, but HTML 3.0 already started on this course.
|But the problem then reappears for music notation, astrological symbols,
|warning icons ad anything else that doesn't fall under mathematical
|notation. So we still need to solve it, I guess.
Just like there are entity sets for accented characters, publishing
symbols and mathematical symbols, we should define additional sets of
`standard' symbols.
HTML 3.0 already defines typical WWW symbols, like `binary file', `tar
file', `telnet' and `caution'. The symbols are are partly based on an
ISO proposal for `desktop icons' (ISO/IEC CD 11581).
Using entities(*) is IMHO the way forward. No matter how efficient
the HTTP request is made, it will always be more efficient to use
&scales;
instead of
<img src="astrological/signs.gif#4">
or whatever. And it has several other advantages as well, for example,
it is independent of resolution, color, and style (how about
<b>&scales;</b>?)
Of course, there will remain some symbols that are not worth
standardizing, since they are unlikely to be used again. Any method is
good enough for those.
So what symbols sets could be defined?
- ISO entity sets, including ISOnum, ISOpub, ISOtech, etc.
- `WWW' set (or whatever we call it) already defined in HTML 3.0
- musical symbols
- architectural symbols
- astrological symbols
- pointing hands
- traffic signs
- etc.
Agreeing on them is the difficult part. Implementing can't be that
hard. Apart from long tables of entities, all that's needed is that
someone creates a font for them.
---------
*) Erik Naggum argued on comp.text.sgml that it would make more sense
to standardize the SDATA replacement text than the entity names.
Something to think about for when HTML x.0 starts to allow general
entities.
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