Re: <PAGE> proposal

Arjun Ray (aray@pipeline.com)
Fri, 22 Dec 1995 18:06:56 -0500 (EST)


On Fri, 22 Dec 1995, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> > I often use the term "Home Page" instead of "Home File" because I view an
> > HTML URL as a page. The scrolling behavior you described to go to the next
> > page seems awkward. May be a "Next" button on a browser is more appropriate.
> > A browser can use seomthing like like <LINK REL="NextPage" HREF="..."> to
> > associate an URL with its "Next" button. This would not require a new tag
> > to be introduced.
>
> Doesn't address the underlying problem, which is the coincidental cohesion of
> an abstraction (scrollable display extent) with a representation (file).

On the contrary, the <LINK> suggestion is a "solution" insofar as there
is a "problem". It's important to remember that HTML is an SGML
application: the operative concept is "document entity", i.e. everything
between <HTML> and </HTML>[*]. The "abstraction" is merely a roundabout way
of saying that rendering the document entity on certain devices could
require a scrolling (or paging) capability in these devices: but the
document entity *itself* carries no such assumption. Moreover, you don't
have to store the document entity in a file: you could even generate it
on the fly programmatically -- even from a single file:-)

It looks to me that the "cohesion" you're really questioning is that
between an URL and a document entity. i.e. that a single URL resolves,
and is expected to resolve, to a single entity, when for convenience you
want to store multiple entities together and still have that *single* URL
refer to this collection in an "intelligent" way.

[*] Yes, this is a simplification. No flames please.

Regards,

Arjun