Re: A proposal for addition to HTML 3.0: Frames

Christophe.Espert@der.edf.fr (Christophe ESPERT) wrote:

> connolly@beach.w3.org wrote:
> > A distinct MIME type and SGML document type seems like an awfully
> > good idea here.
> 
> I agree completely with Dan and Chris on this.  I think a new document type
> is a very interesting idea instead of botching up the HTML DTD with too
> many extensions.


A new document type with it's own PUBLIC identifier
is definitely a good idea, but I don't think a new 
media type is.

FRAMES documents are (or at least can be made to be)
compatible with level 2 browsers; the <NOFRAMES> element
provides an alternate "starting point" or "hub",
and the frame subdocuments can be interpreted as level 2
HTML by ignoring the TARGET attribute on <A>.

Labelling FRAMES documents as something other than 'text/html' [*]
would defeat this entirely.

I think the approach Netscape has taken with <NOFRAMES> and
<NOEMBED> is, in principle, the right way to go when
adding new extensions.



> The presence of an SGML parser would also contribute a lot to the use
> of declaration subsets. [...]

I agree wholeheartedly.


--Joe English

  joe@art.com

    [*] Or 'text/html; features="frames"' or whatever the
    content-negotiation format is this week :-)

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• lilley (lilley@afs.mcc.ac.uk)