Dear Netters in relation to Henry Rzepa's interesting post, I have more questions than answers. Why should we explicitly exclude XML and CML? Surely if they have a role to play it is a mistake to try and cover the same ground in HTML 4? Is HTML 4 coming from a different set of concerns than is served by XML? How many Chemistry Robots are there which can process Henry's SMILES string or the HTML 4 form of the viagra molecule? There is a difference between chemistry on the page (explicitly encoded in HTML) and chemistry available through the www (in databases which may be accessed through the www) -- a suitably designed robot could rely on the search capabilities of the databases it was pointed at. Should a chemistry robot trawl for chemically interesting HTML or offer multiple searches of www sites with publicly available databases? Or both? If both, there is likely to be a trade-off between consistency and completeness. Well it wont be the first time. Seems as though it would be a good idea if HTML evolves to support some explicit tagging of Molecular Structures (cf the provision of key terms for abstracts with conventional publications). But what about the differences/non-equivalence between different encoding systems? Does it matter? ChemSymphony does have ways of allowing the author/publisher to decide whether or not and how much presentational autonomy to give the user. In effect the publisher can give the user a control applet which allows the user to over-ride the default html. But there is a big difference between Java applets and programs which require installation of helper applications on the browser side. The publisher who writes HTML 4 is going to invoke his applets with different code (using the Object tags), but it is pretty clear how to use the 'object' tags in place of the applet tags and the users will then get the benefit of HTML4. See http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html40-970708/appendix/changes.html Admitted, there may be more of a problem for the client who uses plug-ins or applications to read html. On the issue of 'backwards compatibility': the browsers which support HTML4 will have to be backwards compatible -- otherwise they will never win acceptance. We should avoid 'applet' and 'font' tags when we start producing HTML 4 but surely the browsers will support these 'deprecated' tags for a long time to come. Provided they can handle Java applets they should be able to handle Chemistry pages which use ChemSymphony. Users may not get all the benefits of HTML4 in the way that HTML4 provides it, but maybe they will get enought of what they need. Adam --- --- Adam Hodgkin | e-mail: adam@cherwell.com Chairman | Phone: +44 (0)1865 784810 Cherwell Scientific Publishing | Fax: +44 (0)1865 784801 Oxford OX4 4GA, UK | URL: http://www.cherwell.com --- --- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)