On Fri, 6 Sep 1996, Terry Allen wrote:
> Dan, could you do the same thing by making TYPE an attribute on DL?
>
> So that instead of
>
> <TYPE
> HREF="http://www.oclc.org:5046/ ... >
> <DL>
>
> you'd have
>
> <DL TYPE=DC HREF="http://www.oclc.org:5046/ ... >
>
> or did you have a reason for preferring TYPE as an element?
I've lost it a bit here (bear with me; its Friday afternoon!). Could
someone explain to me again why we want to have DC metadata encoded in an
HTML document _for_ rendering, as opposed to being tucked away in the
hidden META elements of the HEAD? Surely if its so that a human can read
it we'll just let it be pretty printed using existing HTML rendering
elements, which doesn't require any new tags or elements. If its for
machine parsing, shouldn't it go in the META elements where interested
humans can read it if they really want to (and maybe even get their
browser to retrieve it for them as in X Mosaic's RBM->File->GetMetadata
menu option) and we can have a nicely parsable syntax?
Using META elements in the HEAD means that the metadata can either be
attached directly to the HTML document its describing or be put in an
HTML document of its own if you want to keep the metadata separate. You
could then even have a comprehensive machine parsable section in the META
elements and a nicely printed but maybe not so comprehensive version in
the renderable section (so as not to overwhelm people with "strange"
metadata stuff).
I think I'm missing something, though I think it may have been missed
before judging from the comments in the "A syntax for Dublin core
Metadata: Recommendations from the second Metadata Workshop" document -
for example (talking about using <DL>...</DL> for DC metadata), "This
suggested approach did not gain much support from the syntax working
group and is not recommended." Hopefully someone can clear this up for
me.
Tatty bye,
Jim'll
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND. LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl. More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *
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