h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is it true that the LINK tag will not work after the new Guide ML is implemented. Will this mean that every page containing a link command will be moderated for broken links. This Tag is integral to practically all my pages. What will we replace it with. I THINK I'M STARTING TO PANIC.

Nope, this is rubbish! The next release will *only* affect the FORM tag.

LINK will always be supported.

HTML's A tag will be removed, this could be what's confusing you. The only current use of A not in LINK is the name attribute which will be added to LINK. So no need to panic.

HTML's A tag will be removed, this could be what's confusing you. The only current use of A not in LINK is the name attribute which will be added to LINK. So no need to panic.

RFC on the Proposed Standard for GuideML 1.0

Entry Data

Entry ID: A665309
Edited by:
The h2g2 Editors

Date: 30 November 2001




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Welcome to the RFC1 for GuideML 1.0. This is where you get to have your say about the development of GuideML, the markup language of the Hitchhiker's Guide.




What's GuideML 1.0?

First, some technical background. Currently h2g2 works by taking the GuideML you write, translating any GuideML-specific tags (like <FOOTNOTE&gt into HTML, and pumping this out to your browser. This job is done by the GuideML parser. At the moment any unrecognised tags are simply passed straight through to the browser and are ignored, so if you typed into your entry, then your browser will receive . As browsers simply ignore any tags they don't recognise, this isn't a problem, but it does have one side effect; it means that as new features crop up in HTML, then they automatically crop up in GuideML. Although this sounds like a Good Thing, it can cause problems.

For example, we don't allow JavaScript on site as poses a security risk, but if you're clever you may be able to track down tags that get passed through the parser with JavaScript attributes intact, or tags that get passed through and display off-site pictures, which we can't allow due to copyright issues. Every time we get alerted to a way that HTML tags can be used to circumvent the rules, we have to fix it, and that's not in anyone's interests, as it takes time away from developing new features.

However, GuideML 1.0 will not let through unrecognised tags, so we need to define every tag that is supported in GuideML - other tags will have no effect and will not be passed through to the browser. You never know, this might also lead to a GuideML DTD... but don't hold your breath.

Stage by Stage

The first stage in defining GuideML 1.0 is to decide on which tags will be included. A proposed list is shown here, and we'd like you post your comments and suggestions in the Forum below.

Once we have settled on the tag list, we can then move onto the attribute list, which will define the attributes that each tag will support. This second stage will then define the standard for GuideML 1.0.

And then we move on to defining GuideML 2.0...




Current GuideML

The following tags are currently supported in GuideML. A * denotes that the tag is deprecated.


























*
<SMILEY>














Proposed Tags to Add to GuideML 1.0

We propose adding the following tags to GuideML. Most of these are culled from XHTML 4.0 and will work right now, though some won't do anything on older browsers (we can't guarantee GuideML tags will work on all browsers, unfortunately).

The most debatable addition here is probably because it only works on IE. However it is a popular tag, so we've put it in the proposal to see what people think. Comments to the Forum below!






























Other Points

Instead of using fixed colours (eg COLOR="#ffffff") we will develop a skin-savvy palette (eg colours that are called 'background', 'foreground', 'highlight' and so on). This prevents people from making their pages unreadable in certain skins, something we don't really like...

We need to examine the levels of headers and subheaders, possibly by introducing an attribute to to determine the level, rather than introducing new tags.




Thanks for the re-encouragement what had me scared was this which I found in A665309

We are not planning to support the following tags, so they will have no effect in GuideML 1.0. A * denotes that the tag is deprecated in HTML 4.0.

Document Structure

These tags are not relevant to h2g2 at this stage, though we may add a way for people to add search terms to entries through a tag in a similar way to the HTML tag.


*





Styles/Alphabets
you note it does not say it says
so that had me trying to get a clarification.
I'm glad that my concern was unfounded.

I think that must be an error, as I hope was your pasteing the entire RFC page into the forum? Hmmm...

Ah, I see the problem. We are not going to be supporting *HTML's* LINK tag, as it's not relevant. We will, however, be maintaining support for GuideML's LINK tag.

That's cleared up, then, but we'll add something to the page to make it clearer for non-HTML experts.

And there's me thinking HTML didn't have a LINK tag, only the A tag.