I find that HTML+ provides most of what I need, in the way of
functionality, however the attributes that are defined for tags do not
completely cover the required functionality. I have therefore, in the
style of MIME, created a number of 'x-' attributes, which when
detected by 'smart standard' browers will provide the functionality
that is required.
It occured to me that 'ordinary' browsers could provide most of the
functionality if there was a method to instruct the browser to
interpret the 'x-' attributes as standard defined attributes.
I would suggest then that a 'ALIAS' entity be added to the HTML+ RFC
to allow for authors to indicate that document type specific
extended attributes could be interpreted as defined attributes with
some possible degradation in functionality.
For example I have used an X-CLASSIFIER attribute on headers that is
functionally almost the same as INDEX but with some minor variances.
It would be helpful if at the start of the document to include the
statement <ALIAS INDEX X-CLASSIFIER> to allow standard browsers to use
the classifiers as an index.
The ALIAS function would allow documents that are marked up in a
specific format to be viewed by non-specific browsers and as such
extend the distribution of information.
Fred Williams
fwilliam@ccs.carleton.ca