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- Dan,
-
- > I've made some tangible progress on the X11 browser, so I though
-
- > I'd let you know.
- > ...
- > This code is not in any shape to distribute, or even show anybody.
- > But it works, and it's pretty speedy. That's enough to encourage me
- > to polish it off.
-
- Sounds like great progress! The TCL sounds interesting -- where did
- you get it?
-
-
- > [If you wan't my stuff, you'll have to be C++ capable. I can't
- > think in C any more. :-]
-
- Don't worry - we can handle C++, although for the line mode browser
- we wanted portability into places where C++ could not reach. That's
- why the common code (in WWW/Implementation) is all in C. Believe me,
- after writing the NeXT browser in Objective-C it was a wrench to
- conclude that it would have to be deobjectified.
-
- > If you could round up some info on exactly what I can expect to see
- > in an HTML file, and some idea of how you want it formatted [I have
- > the HTML doc and the LineMode browser, but if you've got time to
- > give me a little more info...] I'll be ready to tackle that pretty
- > soon.
-
- You ask for info on exactly what you can expect to find in an HTML
- file, but you've read the two HTML files about HTML. What is missing
- from there?
-
- Here is some discussion about the tags -- where it's not in
- http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/Tags.html I have updated
- that document now.
-
- Most of the tags are just style tags: this goes for the headings H1
- to H6, the lists UL and OL with list elements LI, the glossary DL
- with elements DT and DD.
-
- <TITLE> ..<TITLE> is designed to be used for putting in the top
- banner of a window, or using as the window name. It also is what you
- would use in a history list. It shouldn't be displayed in the text
- itself, as usually there is a <H1> heading atteh top of the text
- anyway. A difference is that thet title is designed to make sense out
- of context, whereas the heading is within context. For example,
- a title might be "Formatting Characters for Printf -- C reference
- manual" whereas the heading may just be "Formatting characters".
-
- The base address tag is not used, nor is highlighting HP1 etc.
-
- Anchors are used! The REL attribute is NOT used.
-
- <ISINDEX> is sent by servers to indicate that they will accept a
- search given this document name plus keywords. It turns on a search
- panel when the document is the main window. An even better
- implementation would have a keyword field at the bottom of the text
- window if the document is a searchable index. That would make the
- document more self-contained as an item in the user's eyes, and
- reduce screen clutter.
-
- <NEXTID> can be ignored by browsers, only needed for editors.
-
- <XMP> and <LISTING> are used to indicate inserted literal text.
- To make life easier for those writing documents (and because we don't
- have entities in the code yet) they are special in that EVERYTHING is
- litteral text until the closing tag - so one can use XMP for giving
- examples of HTML for example. (We really need an escaping method -
- the next parser will have simpl entities like "<." for "<".)
- Within XMP or LISTING, newlines are significant (and mean "new
- line"!)
-
- <PLAINTEXT> is used to indicate that the rest of the file is in fact
- just ASCII. It turns off SGML parsing completely. It's a fudge for
- the moment, until we have the document format negociation.
- ______________________________________
-
- Structure of documents:
-
- In writing a new generic parser, I wondered whether your text object
- will store the nested structure of a document. At the moment, the
- document is a linear sequence of styles: you can't have lists within
- lists, etc. Ideally, it would be able to handle this - although its
- more difficult for a human writer to handle when formatting the
- document. I would in fact prefer, instead of <H1>, <H2> etc for
- headings [those come from the AAP DTD] to have a nestable
- <SECTION>..</SECTION> element, and a generic <H>..</H> which at any
- level within the sections would produce the required level of
- heading.
-
- For a browser, it is quite satisfactory to flatten the structure back
- into a sequence of styles, but for an editor it isn't. Are you going
- to go for editing capability?
-
- Tim
-
- PS: Shall I put you on the www-talk list?
-
-