Re: Proposal For Outline Markup Scheme For HTML 3.0

Paul Prescod (papresco@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca)
Thu, 20 Jul 1995 08:57:55 -0400


>1. Why have the OUTLINE attribute at all? Just use stylesheets, giving
> collapsing/noncollapsing behaviour on the basis of ID or (better yet) a
> presentation-specific STYLE attribute.

I do not see this outlining thing as requiring us to move back towards
presentation-specific. We shun "BLINK" because we believe that anything
that blinks probably blinks for a reason. It is somehow a different element
than things that do not blink. Therefore the element should be named as
what it _is_, and BLINKing should be an attribute attached to that thing.

Similarly there must be a good reason why some elements are collapsed and
not others. Perhaps the "top level" elements are expanded and all others
are collapsed. That can be expressed either in the a CLASS attribute (i.e.
CLASS = TOPLEVEL) or with a sophisticated style-sheet "query" language(i.e.
HTML.BODY.UL[CLASS=Collapsible].LI.expanded = TRUE ).

Paul Prescod

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Paul Prescod (papresco@calum.uwaterloo.ca)