Unknown or X-extended tags

Steven D. Majewski (sdm7g@virginia.edu)
Fri, 23 Sep 1994 20:40:16 -0400 (EDT)

Both Mosaic and Lynx currently ignore any tags they don't understand.
( probably the only reasonable things right now, considering the
relatively undefined state of HTML )
They also both seem to ignore any parameters they don't understand.
( like "<CODE LANG=C>" for example. )

Is this behaviour likely to continue, and be considered the "RIGHT
THING" to do ?

I would like to include other custom non-HTML markup in my HTML
documents. I could use comments, <!-- My-Markup-Tag -->, but will
that prevent my easily using other SGML tools on that text?

I would think that it would be desirable to be able to consider
HTML documents as a subset of other SGML markedup text - which
would imply that proper programs ought to accept non-standard
tags. But, if we want to reserve space for *standard* HTML
extensions, then I can see that a standard might want to leave
undefined tags "undefined" - i.e. not guarantee any semantics
including non-interpretation.

Should the <X-*> namespace be reserver, as in mime and rfc822 ?
( That doesn't seem to be a better solution to me. )

-- Steve Majewski (804-982-0831) <sdm7g@Virginia.EDU> --
-- UVA Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics --
-- Box 449 Health Science Center Charlottesville,VA 22908 --
[ "Cheese is more macho?" ]