John Middlemas	Scott E. Preece
hyper-theory@math.byu.edu People		Len Bullard John Middlemas Author profile Mail him
Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 09:01:43 -0500 From: preece@predator.urbana.mcd.mot.com (Scott E. Preece) To: john@eco.powernet.co.uk CC: connolly@w3.org, hyper-theory@math.byu.edu, www-html@w3.org, cbullard@hiwaay.net Subject: Re: HTML is declarative on purpose [was: Web neurons ] X-UIDL: 833390856.002 From: john@eco.powernet.co.uk (John Middlemas) | | I can't really see the problem here. If any code sections within an HTML | page were enclosed by say <CODE> and CODE end tag extensions, then any search | engine could be set up to just ignore those sections, by looking for | those tags. --- The problem is that in some cases (a growing number) the "content" of the page is generated by the code. If you don't execute the code, you don't have any words to index. This is a significant obstacle to providing effective indexing and access to the information on the Web. The problem has existed from the beginning (pages that are actually front ends to database search engines typically offer no clue to indexers of what the content of their database may cover), but the growth in scripting languages and applets is sure to exacerbate the problem. scott -- scott preece motorola/mcg urbana design center 1101 e. university, urbana, il 61801 phone: 217-384-8589 fax: 217-384-8550 internet mail: preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com