Re: Dynamic HTML -- a definition

[Kris Olberg <kjolberg -at- IX -dot- NETCOM -dot- COM>]

At 06:45 AM 12/10/96 -0800, you wrote:
>[snipped]

>> My problem is that we have to build methods to handle other structures as
>> well. We have built some others, but we're wondering how many we've missed.
>> There must be some base set of objects that, given all permutations, can
>> build any HTML document needed.

>Isn't this what SGML is for and does?

Not in the sense I described. You're right in saying that SGML provides the
base, probably definitive, set of building blocks (aka "tags") for any document.

But we're going beyond that by creating objects consisting of SETS of tags.
For example, let's say we want our HTML document to contain a bulleted list
of all territories found in a sales database. Yesterday the database
contained 12 territories, but today we added a territory and plan to add
more tomorrow. We want the HTML and C++ to work together in such a way that
we don't have to modify the HTML document or the C++ to handle the added
territories. Conceptually, this is done by writing a C++ method (we'll call
it "makeList") that can create a list object consisting of a variable number
of list items depending on the number in the database. Thus, the object
looks like:

  -ul-
    -li-Northwest U.S.
    -li-Southeast Asia
     .                   <--the # of list items depends on db
     .
     .
    -li-Alaska
  -/ul-

These are the sorts of objects we're working toward. We want to create a
robust set of methods that will generate literally any document structure we
need.

Regards...Kris
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