Re: meta information

Joe English (jenglish@crl.com)
Thu, 02 Jun 1994 19:12:44 -0700


connolly@hal.com wrote:
> In message <9406021409.AA29622@homer.spry.com>, Chris Wilson writes:
> > Otherwise, each new data element will require
> >not only the discussion/consensus cycle, but also the implementation
> >cycle for each Web browser or server out there.
>
> How many WWW implementations don't include the "skip tags you
> don't recognize" convention?

Any implementation based on a real SGML parser.
OK, so none exist, but it's perfectly reasonable
for information providers to validate HTML documents
with sgmls before serving them.

> I don't believe you have to write
> code each time you want to _ignore_ another tag.

You do need to modify the DTD, though.
Now you *could* add another parameter entity hook
to handle user-definable header elements, but
I still think that a single <META> element is a better
way to go, though -- authors won't need to change
the DTD at all that way.

> And I don't believe
> you can _act_ on a new tag _without_ writing more code.

This is part of the reason why <META> is a *better*
solution: so servers only need to scan for one tag
to respond to an HTTP HEAD request.

One other consideration: There is a limit to how
many new elements you can declare -- GRPCNT and GRPGTCNT
apply here. These can of course be increased if necessary.

> Hmmm... isn't this about like declaring an element X with
> attributes A1, A2, ... up to, oh, let's say A9. Use them
> for whatever you like.

No, not really.

--Joe English

jenglish@crl.com