Re: inline HTML

Albert Lunde (Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu)
Sat, 20 May 1995 23:41:00 +0500

>
> Quinn writes:
> > Is there any chance for a tag allowing inline HTML? I'm really sick
> > of having to cut out and paste in entire blocks of markup whenever
> > they need updated.
> >
> > It would be much nice if we could do something like:
> >
> > <INC src="copyright.html">
> >
> > At the bottom of every page, instead of having to copy that full
> > copyright.html into EVERY FILE that needs it.
> >
> > It really seems crazy to me why this isn't included in HTML. We
> > have inline images. Why not inline HTML? It will push towards
> > more modular and distributed HTML coding.
> >
> > Someone who matters--PLEASE ADD THIS TO HTML2/3.
> >
> > -Quinn
> > -http://www.vv.com/~quinn/
> >
>
> It is not entirely clear to me that I matter -- except that
> my wife and kids tell me so fairly often -- but I can report
> to you on some recent discussions on the html-wg mailing list.
>
> While I was traveling recently a discussion about <INCLUDE>
> erupted and just as suddenly ended. I have to admit that
> I did not follow the discussion, so I cannot report on whether
> it reached a resolution.

I'm not an SGML expert, but I think this raises some SGML issues.

I think SGML has an inclusion mechanism in the form of "entities"
(though it is not generally supported in HTML).

Introducing a general inclusion of HTML source makes in harder
to verify that the result is valid HTML.

Some other kinds of inclusion (i.e. treating the inclusion like
a nested figure and parsing it as a distinct stream of SGML (if
we could define what this meant)) might not raise the same issues.

-- 
    Albert Lunde                      Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu