Re: Proposal: extending LINK for more general controls

[discussion of mnemonic identifiers for LINK; other LINK attributes...]
Bert Bos <bert@let.rug.nl> writes:
>We must be careful that we don't add too many attributes. These things
>are only useful if many authors take the trouble to fill them in. LINK
>already has:
>
>  - REL
>  - REV (which I think is identical to REL, but not everyone agrees)
>  - URN (which is probably not going to be needed)
>  - TITLE
>  - METHODS (not used currently, but that might change)
>  - HREF
>
>Scott Preece suggests:
>
>  - POSITION (though I think this can be covered by REL)
>  - ABBREV
>  - ACCEL (maybe ACCEL and ABBREV can be the same?)
>
>and even
>
>  - VISIBLE
>  - CLASS (better: IFCLASS)
>
>My intuition says that the last two should be handled differently,
>such as with synchronized panes in a multi-pane browser, under the
>control of a style sheet, since it's presentational, not structural
>info.

Bert,

As you point out, it is the function of HTML to provide the mechanism for
providing structural information, hence it is logical to move
presentational information to style sheets. This has been a deciding factor
on what ends up in a stylesheet and what becomes part of HTML. Where the
information is not presentational, but provides navigational or other types
of structure, it should be implemented within HTML and not a stylesheet.

With this in mind, the current set of LINK attributes (REL, REV, etc.) all
provide relational information (except possibly TITLE, which seems to hang
out as META information in its wider sense).

POSITION, ABBREV, ACCEL, VISIBLE and CLASS all are presentational,
typographic or browser behaviour attributes and should be considered style
information or hints to a browser. Yes, one can find examples of this type
of feature in HTML, but I believe you'll find that the document authors
currently deprecate this wherever possible.

Murray

__________________________________________________________________
      Murray M. Altheim, Information Systems Analyst
      National Technology Transfer Center, Wheeling, West Virginia
      email: murray.altheim@nttc.edu
      www:   http://ogopogo.nttc.edu/people/maltheim/maltheim.html