> From: Mr C A Rusbridge <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: HTML standards
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 09:59:22 +0100 (BST)
> Cc: [log in to unmask] (eLib list)
> Reply-to: Mr C A Rusbridge <[log in to unmask]>
> > Now HTML 3 is no more, and HTML 3.2 has been adopted by industry
> > leaders, should we be validating using HTML 2 or HTML 3.2?
> > Has this been discussed within eLib?
...
> Personally, I suspect the answer might depend on your market position and
> your user-base. Assuming that HTML 3.2 might leave older browsers a
> little confused, some might deliberately wish to err on the cautious
> side. Others, needing the additional features of 3.2, might wish to drag
> their user-base to the latest versions.
>
> Is my assumption reasonable?
I feel that eLib projects should conform to the HTML 3.2 standard. I
also feel it is important that eLib projects have procedures for
ensuring document conformance. The HTML Validation service, mirrored
at HENSA (see http://www.hensa.ac.uk/html-val-svc/) is very useful
(Netskills recommends it in our HTML authoring courses).
It is also possible to simplify use of this validation service (e.g.
click on the validation icon at http://www.netskills.ac.uk/events/)
> Remember we _did_ discuss that there is a long term problem in storing in
> HTML, as it is so dynamic and not necessarily backwards compatible. This
> probably doesn't matter so much for your 'navigation' pages, but does for
> your 'content' pages, with many pages not falling into either camp. SGML
> is a safer long term bet, although more of a problem in the short term.
> CLIC have done some good work on SGML-to-HTML conversion on the fly, and
> of course it could be done in batch as well.
>
> The solution might be a deliberate short term decision to store in HTML,
> recognising the need to migrate forward to later versions as appropriate,
> with perhaps a medium term aim of migrating to SGML and a suitable DTD.
Strict conformance to an HTML DTD will facilitate automated conversion to
other DTDs, or use of other facilities such as style sheets.
At the WWW conference in Paris I attended a W3C session on HTML.
Chris Wilson (formerly of NCSA and one of the NCSA Mosaic developers,
now working at Microsoft) spoke about the development of software to
automate the conversion of HTML documents to make use of style
sheets. He described the difficulties of carrying out an automated
conversion if a document did not conform to the HTML DTD.
I would advise eLib projects to:
o Validate documents at initial creation time, and when subsequently updated.
o To periodically run batch validation programs on the WWW server.
o To define legitimate exceptions to the HTML conformance. For
example, Word documents which have been converted using Microsoft's
Internet Assistant will contain non-standard FONT and deprecated
CENTER tags. I don't think this is too much of a problem if it is
intended that the document will be regenerated when a version of
Internet Assistant which conforms to a HTML DTD is available (Chris
Wilson informed me that he is trying to persuade the Word
development team at Microsoft that conformance to the HTML 3.2 DTD
is a good thing).
It may also be acceptable to have a small number of pages
(e.g. project front page) which make use of a limited set of
extensions, if the extensions are documented, and this does not set
a precedent for the main set of pages.
Brian Kelly
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Brian Kelly
Netskills - see http://www.netskills.ac.uk/
Computing Service
University of Newcastle
Newcastle-upon-Tyne [log in to unmask]
NE1 7RU 0191 222 5002
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