[SCL] XML question

[Murray Altheim]

james anderson wrote:
> On Wednesday, Feb 4, 2004, at 23:38 Europe/Berlin, Murray Altheim wrote:
[...]
>> CSS is metadata about a document intended to
>>provide styling and layout information. It's not a script, and
>>even industrial-strength stylesheet languages that include some
>>dynamic transformation features (such as DSSSL or XSL/XSLT) are
>>not considered as scripting languages, they just have some dynamic
>>features as necessary to do document transformations necessary for
>>styling (like adding page numbers, etc.).
> 
> ok. how much a transgression would <style type='text/scl' media='?'> be?

It would be simply incorrect, if the SCL is not style information.
And if it's not scripting information (and I don't see from Pat's
description of his intended usage that it is), <script> would be
just as incorrect. A browser would try to activate or run the
script, rather than it sit there statically as some kind of metadata.

> note also, should one want to pursue this, the discussion of specifying 
> non-HTML data in the html4 spec:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/appendix/notes.html#notes-specifying-data

Well, I was participated in the original IETF HTML WG, and was Sun
Microsystems' rep to the W3C HTML WG. Without trying to invoke any
authority based on that, I think the consensus among those on the
W3C is that post-XML, all non-HTML content is meant to be included
as XML Namespaced markup. The section you cite from HTML 4 is both
obsolete (being written prior to XML), and also not pertinent, since
the "foreign" content mentioned there is either specifically a form
of scripting or styling content. There may be applications for using
SCL as a scripting language, but I've not heard that mentioned. I
think the primary motivation is as static metadata. If there are
application of SCL as both static metadata and as dynamic scripting,
there'd probably need to be a different markup approach to each so
that client software would know what to do with each (i.e., do
nothing, and process it in some way, resp.).

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                    http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .

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