Re: proposal for a new html tag
Liam Relihan (relihanl@ul.ie)
Mon, 20 Mar 1995 14:11:48 +0000 (GMT)
On Mon, 20 Mar 1995, Siegmann P wrote:
> Name of the tag : <LP> and its </LP> counterpart
> Mnemonics : Lower Priority
> What does it do : This new tag is an attempt at giving the author of an html
> document the possibilty to give a relative priority to different parts
> of his document.
>
> Why it is needed:
> It often happens that someone wants to view
> http://www.foo.bar/obnoxiouslylongdocument.html,
> or wants to view a document of a shorter size, but has a very slow connection.
> What usually happens is that the person accessing the document reads the first
> screenful of text, and bases his decision to wait for the rest of the
> document, or to break the transfer all together on that first screenfull.
> So the writer of a long html-document, or a document with a lot of images has
> to make the first screenfull attractive enough in order to have his entire
> document read.
> This is in sharp contrast with the idea of structured documents.
>
> My proposed solution to this problem is the following:
> Order the different parts of the document according to their relative
> importance, with the use of the proposed <LP> tag.
> This tag lowers the priority of the enclosed block, and can be nested, to
> lower the priority of some parts of the document even more.
>
> For example:
> Here is a document describing a better mousetrap, and I, as the author, think
> that the reader should at least have read all my headers and the abstract.
> The text between the headers is considered less important.
> And as formal proofs are so impopular, the proof that my mousetrap really
> works has an even lower priority.
>
> <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Mousetrap</TITLE></HEAD>
> <BODY><H1>My better mousetrap</H1>
> <BLOCKQUOTE>
> <H2>Abstract</H2>
> This is a proposal for a better mousetrap
> </BLOCKQUOTE>
> <H2>Introduction</H2>
> <LP> <!-- HERE the priority is lowered-->
> This is an idea that
> blahblahblahblah
> </LP> <!-- HERE the priority is raised again-->
> <H2>How it works</H2>
> <LP> <!-- HERE the priority is lowered-->
> It works like this....
> <LP> <!-- HERE the priority is lowered even more-->
> <H3>The formal proof</H3>
> And this is the formal proof that it really works:
> ....
> </LP> <!-- HERE the priority is raised to the level of -1 -->
> Lo and behold, it works.
> </LP> <!-- HERE the priority is raised to the begin level-->
> <ADDDRESS><A HREF="mailto:psiegma@cs.vu.nl">Paul Siegmann</A></ADDRESS>
> </BODY></HTML>
>
> Now the viewer, or the person viewing the document could have several options:
> - Fast network connection:
> Ignore the priorities.
> - Medium network connection/curious person
> First load all the document parts with the highest priority, and
> automatically continue loading the rest of the document in order of
> priority.
> - Slow network/modem connection:
> Only show the parts with the highest priority, and only show parts
> with a lower priority if they are clicked on (like with delayed image
> loading)
>
> All comments and suggestions welcome.
Paul...
I suspect that this message would be best dealt with on the HTML mailing
list - anyone have the address handy ?
As regards your tag, I would have my doubts about the partition of documents
based on the speed of network connections --- I reckon that the encoding
of a document should be as independent as possible of its storage and its
transmission. Maybe if you had some other rationale for the
partitioning of documents....
Besides, I think authoring is such a problem in W3 already, that
allowing 3 sub-documents within one document is only going
to mean messier documents and much increased workloads for document
authors and maintainers.
What about a special summary tag ?
Doesn't the latest version of HTML have provision for this sort of thing ?
Liam
--
Liam Relihan, Voice: +353-61-202713
CSIS, Schumann Building, [space] Fax: +353-61-330876
University Of Limerick, E-mail: relihanl@ul.ie
Ireland. http://itdsrv1.ul.ie/PERSONNEL/lrelihan.html