Future of meta-indices: site indexing proposal and Perl script

John C. Mallery (jcma@reagan.ai.mit.edu)
Tue, 22 Mar 1994 21:59:43 --100


From: rst@ai.mit.edu (Robert S. Thau)

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 19:19:33 --100
From: Dave Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>

HTML+ includes the ABSTRACT element for this. The "Summary" HTTP
header should therefore be reserved for a brief description.

Neat. Another twist for the next spin of the script, I guess.

However, (getting back to the original application) some of the files that
people want to have indexed may not have text set off as a formal abstract,
so <ABSTRACT> is not a 100% solution. I'm thinking of search-engine cover
sheets in particular. These frequently consist of nothing but an input
<FORM>, with no text that could be considered a proper abstract. For these
documents at least, I think I'd still need some other way of including
descriptive information which is not necessarily displayed, whether it's

In fact, you want to make assertions about the document using typed links, eg.
"abstract abstracts document". It would seem the mechanism is available in
the protocols, if not all the implmentations.

The power is the links not hacks to the markup language.