MarkUp.wn 20-May-1992 05:49
http://lost-contact.mit.edu/afs/cern.ch/w3.org/www/MarkUp.wn
_____
This document is older than the modification date indicates. It
contains, primarily but not entirely, a document whose original title
appears to have been "HyperText Transfer format", and is the first ever
specification for HTML.
Since it is embedded within fragments of other very early WWW protocol
instructions, and though the file extension identifies it as a WriteNow
document, it appears that this is only part of a document. Loading the
original into WriteNow causes WriteNow to crash, and the document does
not start with the normal WriteNow document identification.
The document content is duplicated in three separate clumps, with minor
changes between the clumps. These presumably represent saved revisions.
From an analysis of the changes, it is possible to reconstruct the
chronological order of the three sections.
This document reproduces in ASCII, as much as possible, the general
original pieces of the manuscript, with all changes placed side by side.
The three sections are labelled 01, 02, and 03. This document evolved
into an HTML document called HTML Tags, which was made available on the
first website at info.cern.ch. A copy of this document from 9 January
1992 exists here:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992JanFeb/0000.html
This has been incorporated into this analysis, as its contents clearly
postdate 03 and yet are a direct descendant of it, with the general
structure being almost identical, and much of the wording retained. The
main difference is that the HTML Tags document has undergone a serious
amount of expansion.
The conclusion is that MarkUp.wn is a version of the first HTML
specification, written in WriteNow rather than HTML, and intended for
internal CERN distribution only. It was then used to form the basis of
the first public description of HTML.
_____
01
HyperText Transfer format
This is a draft for internal discussion. TBD means "To be defined".
Comments please to timbl@vxcern.cern.ch. This copy was printed from the
source on .
Introduction
This document defines the text mark-up format used for network transfer
of hypertext infoirmation. The ASCII (ISO-XXXX) character set [ref] is
used, without extension.The format is marked up in SGML style, with
control information being introduced by a less than sign "<", followed
by an alphanumeric "tag". Following the tag, a number of attributes may
be specified, of the form
attribute_name = value
where the attribute name is alphanumeric, and the value is any printable
string not containing spaces.
Control information is terminated by a closing greater than ">" sign.
We refer to this mark up language as HyperText Markup Language, or HTML.
Default text
Unless otherwise defined by tags, text is transmitted as a stream of
lines. The division of the stream of characters into lines is arbitrary,
and only made in order to allow the text to be passed through systems
which can only handle text with a limited line length. The recommended
line length for transmission is 80 characters. The division into lines
has no significance (except in the case of the XMP and PLAINTEXT tags -
see below).
The names of tags and attributes are not case sensitive: they may be in
lower, upper, or mixed case with exactly the same meaning. (In this
document they are gemerally represented in upper case.)
Tags
It is recommended that a parser ignores those tags which it does not
recognize. A list of tags currently defined follows:
_____
...
01
The text between the opening amd the closing is a title
for the hypertext node. Theer should only be one title in any node.
02 (as 01)
The text between the opening amd the closing is a title
for the hypertext node. Theer should only be one title in any node.
03 (as 01)
The text between the opening amd the closing is a title
for the hypertext node. There should only be one title in any node.
@
Title
The title of a document is given between title tags:
...
The text between the opening and the closing tags is a title for the
hypertext node. There should only be one title in any node. It should
identify the content of the node in a fairly wide context, and should
ideally fit on one line.
The title is not strictly part of the text of the document, but is an
attribute of the node. It may not contain anchors, paragraph marks, or
highlighting. the title may be used to identify the node in a history list,
to label the window displaying the node, etc. It is not normally displayed
in the text of a document itself. Contrast titles with headings .
_____
@
Next ID
This tag takes a single attribute which is the number of the next
document-wide numeric identifier to be allocated (not good SGML). Note that
when modifying a document, old anchor ids should not be reused, as there
may be references stored elsewhere which point to them. This is read and
generated by hypertext editors. Human writers of HTML usually use mnemonic
alpha identifiers. Browser software may ignore this tag. Example of use:
@
Base Address
Anchors specify addresses of other documents, in a from relative to the
address of the current document. Normally, the address of a document is
known to the browser because it was used to access the document. However, is
a document is mailed, or is somehow visible with more than one address (for
example, via its filename and also via its library name server catalogue
number), then the browser needs to know the base address in order to
correctly deduce external document addresses.
The format of this tag is not yet specified.
_____
...
01
The text between the opening and the closing is senstive text.
If the reader selects this text, he should be presented with another
document whose network address is defined by the HREF attribute in the
tag. The format of the network address is specified below.
An attribute REL may give the relationship described by the hyerptext
link. Valid relationships are given below. The deafult relationship if
none other is given is SEE_ALSO.
An attribute ID may give an alphanumeric identifier used to reference
the anchor from other anchors. See the section on addressing below.
02
The text between the opening and the closing is senstive text.
If the reader selects this text, he should be presented with another
document whose network address is defined by the HREF attribute in the
tag. The format of the network address is specified below. This
allows for the form
HREF=# identifier
to refer to another anchor in the same document.
An attribute REL may give the relationship described by the hyerptext
link. Valid relationships are given below. The deafult relationship if
none other is given is SEE_ALSO. An attribute ID may give an
alphanumeric identifier used to reference the anchor from other anchors.
See the section on addressing below.
All identifiers are optional, although one of ID and HREF is necessary
for the anchor to be useful.
03
The text between the opening and the closing is either the
start or destination (or both) of a link.
If the HREF attribute is present, the anchor is senstive text: the start
of a link. If the reader selects this text, he should be presented with
another document whose network address is defined by the parameter of
the HREF attribute . The format of the network address is specified
elsewhere*. This allows for the form
HREF=# identifier
to refer to another anchor in the same document.
The attribute NAME allows the anchor to be the destination of a link.
The value of the parameter is that part of a hypertext address which
follows the hash sign.
An attribute REL may give the relationship described by the hyerptext
link. Valid relationships are given below. The deafult relationship if
none other is given is SEE_ALSO.
All identifiers are optional, although one of NAME and HREF is necessary
for the anchor to be useful.
--
Relationship values
SEE_ALSO
INCLUDES PART_OF
EMBED EMBEDDED_IN
TBD...
@
Anchors
The format of an anchor is as follows:
...
The text between the opening tag and the closing tag is either the start or
destination (or both) of a link. Attributes of the anchor tag are as
follows.
HREF If the HREF attribute is present, the anchor is
senstive text: the start of a link. If the reader
selects this text, he should be presented with
another document whose network address is defined by
the value of the HREF attribute . The format of the
network address is specified elsewhere . This allows
for the form HREF=#identifier to refer to another
anchor in the same document. If the anchor is in
another document, the atribute is a relative name ,
relative to the documents address (or specified base
address if any).
NAME The attribute NAME allows the anchor to be the
destination of a link. The value of the parameter is
that part of a hypertext address which follows the
hash sign.
TYPE An attribute TYPE may give the relationship described
by the hyertext link. The type is expressed by a
string for extensibility. Strings for types with
particular semantics will be registered by the W3
team. The default relationship if none other is given
is void.
All attributes are optional, although one of NAME and HREF is necessary for
the anchor to be useful.
_____
01
TBD
02
This signifies that the node may be queried with a keyword search. (This
may be done by suffixing the node address with a question mark, followed
by a list of keywords separated by plus signs. See the network address
format below).
TBD
03
This signifies that the node may be queried with a keyword search. (This
may be done by suffixing the node address with a question mark, followed
by a list of keywords separated by plus signs. See the network address
format below).
TBD
@
IsIndex
This tag informs the reader that the document is an index document. As well
as reading it, the reader may use a keyword search.
Format:
The node may be queried with a keyword search by suffixing the node address
with a question mark, followed by a list of keywords separated by plus
signs. See the network address format.
_____
01
This is similar to but the link has no specific anchor within
the document. It may have an ID, in which case any reference to it is
effectively to the anchor it references.
02 (as 01)
This is similar to but the link has no specific anchor within
the document. It may have an ID, in which case any reference to it is
effectively to the anchor it references.
03 (as 01)
This is similar to but the link has no specific anchor within
the document. It may have an ID, in which case any reference to it is
effectively to the anchor it references.
_____
01
TBD
02
TBD
_____
01
This tag indicates that all following text is to be taken litterally, up
to the end of the file. Plain text is designed to be represented in the
same way as example <XMP> text, with fixed width character and
significant line breaks.
This tag allows the rest of a file to be read efficiently without
parsing. Its presence is an optimisation.
02 (as 01)
This tag indicates that all following text is to be taken litterally, up
to the end of the file. Plain text is designed to be represented in the
same way as example <XMP> text, with fixed width character and
significant line breaks.
This tag allows the rest of a file to be read efficiently without
parsing. Its presence is an optimisation.
@
Plaintext
This tag indicates that all following text is to be taken litterally, up to
the end of the file. Plain text is designed to be represented in the same
way as example XMP text, with fixed width character and significant line
breaks. Format:
<PLAINTEXT>
This tag allows the rest of a file to be read efficiently without parsing.
Its presence is an optimisation. There is no closing tag.
_____
<XMP> ..</XMP>
01
The text between these tags is to be portrayed in a fixed width font, so
that any formatting done by character spacing on successive lines will
be maintained. Between these tags, line boundaries are significant
, and are to be interpreted as a move to the start of a new line.
Between thse tags, the ASCII Horizontal Tab (HT) character should be
interpreted as the smallest positive nonzero number of spaces which will
leave the number of characters so far on the line as a multiple of 8.
Its use is not recommended however.
02 (as 01)
The text between these tags is to be portrayed in a fixed width font, so
that any formatting done by character spacing on successive lines will
be maintained. Between these tags, line boundaries are significant
, and are to be interpreted as a move to the start of a new line.
Between thse tags, the ASCII Horizontal Tab (HT) character should be
interpreted as the smallest positive nonzero number of spaces which will
leave the number of characters so far on the line as a multiple of 8.
Its use is not recommended however.
@
Example sections
These styles allow text of fixed-width characters to be embedded absolutely
as is into the document. The format is:
<LISTING>
...
</LISTING>
The text between these tags is to be portrayed in a fixed width font, so
that any formatting done by character spacing on successive lines will be
maintained. Between the opening and closing tags:
The text may contain any ISO Latin printable characters, including the
tag opener, so long as it does not contain the closing tag in full.
Line boundaries are significant, and are to be interpreted as a move to
the start of a new line.
The ASCII Horizontal Tab (HT) character should be interpreted as the
smallest positive nonzero number of spaces which will leave the
number of characters so far on the line as a multiple of 8. Its use
is not recommended however.
The LISTING tag is portrayed so that at least 132 characters will fit on a
line. The XMP tag is portrayed in a font so that at least 80 characters
will fit on a line but is otherwise identical to LISTING. The examples of
markup are here given using the XMP tag.
_____
<P>
01
This tag indicates a new paragraph. The exact representation of this
(indentation, leading, etc) is not dfined here, and may be a function
of other tags.
02
This tag indicates a new paragraph. The exact representation of this
(indentation, leading, etc) is not defined here, and may be a function
of other tags.
@
Paragraph
This tag indicates a new paragraph. The exact representation of this
(indentation, leading, etc) is not defined here, and may be a function of
other tags, style sheets etc. The format is simply
<P>
(In SGML terms, paragraph elements are transmitted in minimised form).
_____
<H1>, <H2>, <H3>
<HP1>, <HP2>
<DL>, <DD>, <DT>
<UL>, <OL>, <LI>
01
These tags are kept as defined in the CERN SGML guide [ref]. Their
definition is completely historical.
02 (as 01)
These tags are kept as defined in the CERN SGML guide [ref]. Their
definition is completely historical.
@
Headings
Several levels (at least six) of heading are supported. Note that a
hypertext document tends to need less levels of heading than a normal
document whose only structure is given by the nesting of headings. H1 is the
highest level of heading, and is recommened for the start of a hypertext
node. It is suggested that the first heading be one suitable for a reader
who is already browsing in related information, in contrast to the title tag
which should identify the node in a wider context.
<H1>, <H2>, <H3>, <H4>, <H5>, <H6>
These tags are kept as defined in the CERN SGML guide. Their definition is
completely historical, deriving from the AAP tag set. A difference is that
HTML documents allow headings to be terminated by closing tags:
<H2>Second level heading</h2>
Highlighting
The highlighted phrase tags may occur in normal text, and may be nested. For
each opening tag there must follow a corresponding closing tag. NOT
CURRENTLY USED.
<HP1>...</HP1> <HP2>... </HP2> etc.
Glossaries
A glosary (or definition list) is a list of paragraphs each of which has a
short title alongside it. Apart from glossaries, this format is useful for
presenting a set of named elements to the reader. The format is as follows:
<DL>
<DT>Term<DD>definition pagagraph
<DT>Term2<DD>Definition of term2
</DL>
Lists
A list is a sequence of paragraphs, each of which is preceded by a special
mark or sequence number. The format is:
<UL>
<LI> list element
<LI> another list element ...
</LI>
The opening list tag (UL for an unordered list, OL for an ordered one) must
be immediately followed by the first list element. The representation of the
list is not defined here, but a bulleted list for unordered lists, and a
sequence of numbered paraghraphs for an ordered list would be quite
appropriate.
"OL" IS NOT CURRENTLY USED
_____
Sean B. Palmer
Original document by Tim Berners-Lee, circa 1990
This document created 1 January 2011