Re: INCLUDE tag

Martian (abigail@mars.ic.iaf.nl)
Sat, 29 Apr 1995 23:01:01 +0500


Once upon a time you, Ian Higgs +44 171 510 8595, wrote:
++
++ What I wanted to see is the contents of the object as it would be
++ displayed if I had asked for it directly. If the object is HTML
++ then it should be parsed in context just like #include for C code.
++
++ JE] SGML has a mechanism for doing this, namely entity references:
++
++ Perfect! (NETSCAPE: Netscape 1.1 b4 please ...)

In my opinion, there is no reason to have an <include> tag in html,
where the <include> includes another file, combining both files to
one html file. That will only lead to more network traffic and longer
display times (since 2 requests have to be made.) There are a few
alternatives:
1) Read the manual of your editor and learn how to use macros.
2) Use server-side includes. Though that has the disadvantages of
fooling proxies and caches.
3) Use something like m4 macros to generate the files, including the
included fragments.
4) Use <a>.

After all, don't forget that #include is part of the C *preprocessor*,
not the compiler.

Abigail