HTML Design Notebook

Contents

1. Background
2. Specification
3. Documentation for Users and Authors
4. Implementations
5. Meetings
6. Working Groups
7. My Notes
8. Related Specs
9. Related Projects

Background

• The World Wide Web Initiative: The Project
• About HTML, by Tim Berners-Lee
• People involved in the WorldWideWeb project

Specification

The HTML 2.0 Specification Review materials includes complete information on the HTML Working group of the IETF, the discussion of the HTML 2.0 specification, mailing list archive, and other supporting materials.

See the Publication History section for pointers to HTML+ and other specifications.

Validation and Maintenance Tools

Have a question about HTML syntax? Enter the questionable data into HaLsoft HTML Validation Service and have it checked interactively!

Documentation for Users and Authors

• Peter Flynn's How to write HTML files
• Composing Good HTML
• A Beginner's Guide to HTML, National Center for Supercomputing Applications / softdev@ncsa.uiuc.edu
• JHU/APL's WWW & HTML Developer's JumpStation - Page 1
• HTML 2.0 DTD This is a reference aid for the HTML 2.0 DTD maintained by Earl Hood.
• Gentle Introduction to SGML from the TEI guidelines.

Discussion

Electronic Discussion Forums

www-talk

The WWW talk mailing list is the original technical discussion forum for the WWW project. Comments, questions, and proposals are welcome, but please direct Mosaic installation/support questions to comp.infosystems.users or mosaic-x@ncsa-uiuc.edu. www-talk is maintained by an administrator at CERN. There is also a hypertext archive.

HTML Working Group

IETF Working group for HTML.

www-html

The WWW HTML Mailing List was recently created by Tim Berners-Lee and some other folks, as an effort to reduce the traffic on www-talk. There is a hypertext archive.

comp.text.sgml

A USENET newsgroup for discussion about SGML.

• WAIS archive
• FTP archive

comp.infosystems.www

A USENET newsgroup for discussion about WWW. This is a high-traffic, low signal-to-noise discussion forum. I believe there is a vote in progress to split the group into serveral more manageable groups. After c.i.w is split, I believe WIT should be adapted to use the USENET infrastructure.

HyperNews page on HTML

Lots of links to other stuff, plus: support for adding your own links!

Some Articles

• April 15: A Formalism for Internet Information References
• April 4: Toward Closure on HTML (watch the www-talk mailing list for responses)
• February 15: An Essay on HTML
• Re: WWW and Hytime (was Explicit Linking is Impossible)
• WWW and Hytime [was Explicit Linking is Impossible] (in comp.text.sgml)
• WEK: HTML DTD and HyTime
• Request for a valid HTML.DTD @ CERN

Implementations

Each implementation has its own quirks w.r.t SGML and HTML:

• Netscape Extensions to HTML, and my comments on their extensions with respect to SGML..
• html-helper-mode by Nelson Minar another emacs editing mode. I haven't checked it out.
• Roy Fielding's perl library
• Jim Davis's perl HTML parser. Seems to do comments wrong.
• Linemode from CERN
  • XMP parsing: much like CDATA, but not quite. There's no way in SGML to represent the "everything up to </XMP>" syntax of the linemode's XMP tag. An SGML CDATA element ends at the first occurence of </[a-zA-Z].
  • flat formatter: no nested lists
• NeXT by timbl
  • the dreaded unquoted attribute values, ala:

    	<a href="http://host/file.html">
    

• MosaicWWW
  • broken comment parsing -- thinks comments end with >, rather than the actual-->
  • re-introduced SHORTTAG features, ala <IMG ISMAP> rather than <IMG feature="ismap">
  • elements like BR and HR should have been elements -- either external data elements, or general elements for processing instructions or some such.
• MidasWWW 1.0
  Really nifty style-sheet based SGML hypertext widget set. Too bad it got beat out by Mosaic :-(
• Cello (PC/MS-Windows) comes from Cornell
• tkWWW
  
  • Seems to handle most of HTML+.
• w3-mode.el for emacs
  • Follows Mosaic on forms, IMG, etc.
• lynx
  
  • Follows Mosaic on forms, IMG, etc.
  • I've never seen it in action
• Dave Raggett's HTML+ implementation
  
  • unrelease. Can't tell much about it.

Other Tools

• html-mode.el by Marc Andressen (sp?)
  • fixes unqoted attribute values
  • I wish it would add tags surrounding the region in stead of inserting both start and end tags at point.
  • Perhaps I can enhance it to Do The Right thing with P elements too.
• psgml mode
  • requires a newer emacs version than I have. Bummer.
• www_and_frame by connolly@convex.com
• frame2html by ???
• The LaTeX2HTML Translator
  • nifty -- gives a whole new motivation for nested lists and such.
  • doesn't properly quote attribute values.
• CERN's printing tools
• numerous RTF2HTML tools
  • RTF (Rich Text Format) utilities
    6 April 1994 Paul DuBois dubois@primate.wisc.ed
  • Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www
    Message-ID: <1993Aug3.085447.29780@hemlock.cray.com%gt;
    From: cjh@cray.com (Chris J. Hector)
    Subject: RTF to HTML converter - Version Update

Working Groups

HTML Working group of the IETF

See HTML 2.0 Spec Review Materials for details.

Austin WWW User's Group (AWWWUG)

http://192.195.32.1/www/Austin/AustinOrgs/AWWWUG/AWWWUG.html

Integration of Internet Information Resources

Publications

• Resource Transponders, 10/26/1993, <draft-ietf-iiir-transponders-01.txt>
• A Vision of an Integrated Internet Information Service, 10/26/1993, <draft-ietf-iiir-vision-01.txt>
• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): A Representation of Textual Information and MetaInformation for Retrieval and Interchange, 07/23/1993, <draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt, .ps>
• WAIS over Z39.50-1988, 10/26/1993, <draft-ietf-iiir-wais-00.txt>
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) A Stateless Search, Retrieve and Manipulation Protocol, 11/16/1993, draft-ietf-iiir-http-00.txt, .ps

Related Specs

HTML+ Status

My notes on the history/status of HTML, with a recent (1994-11-02) message from Dave Ragget.

internet-drafts/draft-levinson-sgml-00.txt

A way to wrap SGML documents up in MIME messages. Should be brought into line with SGML Open catalog files.

TEI Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange

An ambitious application of SGML int the humanities and linguistics domain. The TEI documentation includes lots of good stuff about SGML, which in turn may help folks understand HTML.

Related Projects

This section is hopelessly out of date. DWC 1994-10-14

• DTD2HTML Information Page
• Unified Computer Science TR Index
• The Sunrise project
• CommerceNet Home
• Hypermedia authoring tools
• Hypertext Review
• GNN Home Page
• OSF's HTML tools evaluation