Re: censored formfeeds

Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@beach.w3.org)
Fri, 30 Jun 1995 11:56:28 -0400


In message <199506301543.PAA18152@freki.althingi.is>, dba@althingi.is writes:
>
>In the case of plaintext and pre the formatter
>should not be doing any formatting it should simply pass the
>text or whatever through, why should it not pass some characters
>through, why should FF be censored. It is contrary to all unix
>philosophy to overspecify in this way.

What's Unix philosophy got to do with the price of tea in china?

No FF character appears in any conforming HTML document. If you've
got an FF character, the behaviour of any user agent is unspecified.
See:

Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 - Characters, Words, and Paragraphs
Fri Jun 16 19:56:22 1995
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_6.html#SEC64

|The HTML Document Character Set
|
|[...]
|
|In SGML applications, the use of control characters is limited in order to
|maximize the chance of successful interchange over heterogeneous
|networks and operating systems. In the HTML document character set
|only three control characters are allowed: Horizontal Tab, Carriage
|Return, and Line Feed (code positions 9, 13, and 10).

>> There should be nothing in an HTML
>>document that is specific to a particular device.
>
>How is the <a> tag implemented on the printer - it is very specific
>to the interactive platform.

Bull-pucky. Ever heard of footnotes? Ever used the linemode browser?

e.g.
connolly@www20 ../Workshop9507[506] www -n -listrefs http://www.w3.org/ >~/,xxx

The World Wide Web Initiative: The Project
WWWTHE WORLD WIDE WEB


___________________________________

The World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium[1] promotes the Web by producing
specifications[2] and reference software[3].

[...]

*** References from this document ***
[1] http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Consortium/
[2] http://www.w3.org/#zSpecifications
[3] http://www.w3.org/#zReference
...

>> If your layout software is not smart
>>enough to take advantage of that information it is a problem with the
>>layout software and not with HTML.
>
>It is not a question of my layout software.
>It is a question of what other people get when they print out
>the things that I present on the web.

Sure sounds like a question of layout software -- the _client_'s
layout software.

>In a plaintext document (like report from a database) I might put a comment
>"Print this document as HTML then page headers will stay in place"
>In Mosaic you can choose to print as HTML but some browsers dont offer
>that

bingo. "layout software" issue.

> and if there is a document with mixed markup text and plaintext or pre
>then I will get all the markup printed so this is no solution.

Huh?

Dan