At 00:42 +0000 UTC, on 2005/12/15, Ian Hickson wrote: > On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Alexey Feldgendler wrote:
[...] >> One possible solution that comes to my mind is describing a site map >> with some tree of nested elements, with page titles, URIs and other meta >> information, but without any presentational information. As this site >> map is common for all or most pages of a site, it could be included as >> an external XML resource. > > Many people have tried this kind of thing in the past, with little > success. As far as I can tell, there is little interest from Web authors > in describing their site map (which is more a graph than a tree, and which > is getting all the more dynamic with things like wikis). > > My theory is that there is an inverse relationship between the level of > abstraction involved and the level of interest from authors. Site maps in > external files are a kind of abstraction beyond most authors. While that is certainly true, at the same time there appears to be a strong trend towards using automated Web publishing systems (CMSs, wikis, blogs, forums, etc.). Such a system will often 'know' already what the sitemap 'is' and could thus probably easily generate it automagically. I think it would make sense to adjust a spec not only to what human HTML authors can/will use, but also take into account what automated systems can/will. (Btw, I don't know if it would have to be a 'sitemap'. The profile attribute to HEAD seems to apply to this.) -- Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>