VOEvent PR RFC: Description content

[Mark Taylor]

> please write concerns to the comments page (see [3] below), and also  
> to the WG mailing list (voevent at ivoa.net).

I have a comment about the content of the Description element. I agree
that it will sometimes be desirable to use plain text and sometimes to
use HTML, but for software which encounters the content the current
proposal presents the problem of how to present it - does it assume
it's HTML and attempt to format it thus (which will look wrong if it's
plain) or assume it's plain text and display it raw (which will look
wrong if it's HTML) or attempt to guess by looking which it is (which
is hard and error-prone). Can I suggest an additional attribute format
on Description which may take (at least) the values plain (the default)
and html. I'd suggest that it is not limited to these values so that
specialised applications can use other formatting methods if they wish
to in the future (on the understanding that not all software may know
what to do with exotic formatting methods).

Mark

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/