<ISINDEX>

neuss@igd.fhg.de
Thu, 24 Nov 1994 13:16:48 +0100

Rob Hartill <hartill@ooo.lanl.gov> wrote:

>Is it reasonable to expect browsers which don't understand Netscape's
>PROMPT in ISINDEX to work properly ?

Grrr.. ISINDEX is brain damaged anyway. Whether or not a server supports
indexing is a property of the server, not of the document. IMVHO the use
of ISINDEX should be discouraged. Instead, servers should return
the header element
Public: TEXTSEARCH
instead (see also http://info.cern.ch/
hypertext/WWW/Protocols/HTTP/Object_Headers.html
for details). Nobody uses it. :-(

For user interfaces, FORMs are more convinient anyway. There is no need
to add special gizmos to ISINDEX. If, on the other hand, we had a well
defined behaviour for ISINDEX, and a way of communicating the "Server
supports indexing" between server and client, there'd be an access
point for automatic resource discovery and indexing tools like
Harvest and ALIWEB.

(now where's that asbestos suit..)
Chris

---
"I ride tandem with a random.."
Christian Neuss   # Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics
Wilhelminenstr.7  #  64283 Darmstadt # Germany
e-mail: neuss@igd.fhg.de  http://www.igd.fhg.de/~neuss/me.html