24 Dec
2008
24 Dec
'08
1:24 p.m.
At 01:04 PM 12/24/2008 -0800, you wrote:
HTML can be rendered so radically different on various platforms. What
would the offset measure? Bytes? Characters? (those two would be very
different) Lines? How could you possibly compute that? Would a byte offset
be meaningful? A byte offset that lands you in the middle of a script or
code of some other type would be the same screen position as a byte offset
that's hundreds of bytes (or thousands) different; how would that be
useful? Ever see a web page rendered in Lynx? It's just text and nothing more.
The whole point of a web browser is that the content is rendering engine
independent. I think that some sort of offset is a step backwards and is
unlikely to be implemented.
Just my $0.02
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> I wish
that I knew a good way in HTML to express offsets from beginning
> of a document.
On Wed, 24 Dec 2008, Mike Hatch wrote:
It is a variant of the <a href= tag
To another page it would be <a href="pagename.htm">, for a position in
that
page it would be <a href="pagename.htm#position">, where
'position' is
a tag
in that page <a name="position">.
Yes, you can ADD 'position's to get a form of symbolic labeling.
That is a very useful feature for identifying positions within your own
files. (Although it left a bit to be desired when implementing full
indices. That is only for before-the-fact access.
I don't own every website that I reference. In some of my indexing
projects, instead of storing both a URL AND a file offset, I would like
a URL that dereferences to an offset within the file, such as
"notice the wording where he says 'xxx' (684 bytes into that file)".
http://www.foo.bar/RFC.html*684
(where '*' is some unique punctuation provided for in the HTML spec)
"Dear webmaster, is that a type at xxxx.html/*yyy ?"
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the current implementations of HTML
(and SGML?) do not provide an "offset" operator. If I am wrong, please
tell me! It took me weeks to find <pre></pre> to be able to do
non-proportional ASCII art, and to be able to create websites that discuss
HTML.
Inclusion of an "offset operator" would permit handing a URL to somebody
and having THEIR browser take them to the desired location within the
file, WITHOUT edit rights to the file.
It would permit creating an index to a document WITHOUT requiring
annotation of the original, nor captive environment for display.
The pointers within the index could then be actual access URLs
"RFC.html*684" or http://www.foo.bar/RFC.html*684
I do not like providing a proprietary viewer that must be used to be able
to see the referenced items within the file.
BTW, I do NOT see variations in word size or character set, as being
relevant.