Tim wrote:
On Tue, 2006-12-19 at 14:07 -0800, Don Russell wrote:
I thought there was a way in html to define an "entity" and then use
that throughout the document.
So, for example I might have something that appears in multiple places
but I only want to code it once:
I was thinking of something like...
<meta entity="callno" content="1(123)555-1212"/>
Quickly looking at <http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/>, it looks like you can
create new entities for referencing particular characters (e.g. you can
make your own ®istered; to refer to the character used to represent
®), but it doesn't seem to suggest that you can use it for a whole
string of characters.
I may have poisoned my thinking and got stuck with "entity"... maybe
there's something else. Or maybe it's a figment of my imagination..
something I wish were available. I know it's possible with other mark up
languages like IBMs DCF...
Then I could use &callno; in the body of the document and the browser
would properly substitute the specified value.
I suppose I could write a little javascript function and then use
<script>...</script> to call it as needed and the function would use
document.write.... but that really is overkill, and I'd prefer not to
REQUIRE javascript.
Any suggestions?
Non-XHTML alternative solutions:
Search and replace in your text editor, if it's for a once off authoring
solution.
SSI for webpages that might need their variables updated. I do that for
my price lists. One "include" source gets updated, and any page that
refers to some particular item's price shows the current one.
SSI may be viable solution ....
Thanks,
Don
