[l2h] Wrong TITLEs in frames' *_tf.html files, any fix available?

Ross MOORE Ross MOORE <ross@ics.mq.edu.au>
Mon, 17 May 1999 18:12:17 +1000 (EST)


Thanks for the input Uli.
I was hoping you would respond.

> 
>     Ross> The problem is just a little deeper than this.  The variable
>     Ross> $indexname is never defined, anywhere!  It occurs for
>     Ross> frame-documents with an Index-view, and also (erroneously,
>     Ross> as you say) for those with a Contents-view.
> 
>     Ross> The real question is: What should these frameset pages be
>     Ross> TITLEd ?
> 
> what about having the title to state what the frame is about, or to
> have the url of content_view?  In practice it happens e.g. that the
> bot indexes file_ct.html (if he does at all). If a user follows this
> link from a search engine, he will end up on the desired page, however
> without any navigation facilities, or any means to see the structure
> of the document.

Yes, these are the sort of practical problems that should be
addressed, if at all possible.

But putting a full URL in the <TITLE> is surely not the way to do it.


BTW, the structure of frame-documents produced by LaTeX2HTML
is currently:

<!DOCTYPE ....>
<HTML>
 <FRAMESET ....>
  <FRAME....>
  ...
  <NOFRAMES>
   <HEAD>
   ...
   </HEAD>
   <BODY>
    ....
    ....
   </BODY>
  </NOFRAMES>
 </FRAMESET>
</HTML>


Would this be better arranged as follows?

<!DOCTYPE ....>
<HTML>
 <HEAD>
  ....
 </HEAD>
 <FRAMESET ....>
  <FRAME....>
  ...
  <NOFRAMES>
   <BODY>
    ....
    ....
   </BODY>
  </NOFRAMES>
 </FRAMESET>
</HTML>



> 
> There are several approaches to resolve this problem. E.g., we might
> put the needed information in the Title attribute like
> 
> a) Contents Frame of http://.../file_tf.html

Do you mean the ... to be replaced with the full URL ?
If so, then I say no --- too long.
I'm sympathetic to leaving the dots as is, so that a relative
reference is implied; but then why not just
	"Contents Frame of  file_tf.html "  ?

But even this doesn't give any indication of what the contents
are about, if you happened to link to this Frameset page.
Does this matter ?
Why did an indexer find this page and not  file_tf.html  itself ?

> 
> b) Provide a link in any frame to the current tf_frame

Interesting idea.  Where should it go,
to not look offensive when the view is already from the  tf_frame ?


Is this acceptable, at the very top, preceding the <H1>...</H1> ?

<P ALIGN="RIGHT">
<SMALL><A HREF="file_tf.html">Frames view</A></SMALL>
</P>


> c) Have tables instead of frames, which provides simple means of
> avoiding all this (no offence here Ross ;-)

None taken ;-)
 ... but then it wouldn't be needing  frame.pl , would it ? 

If someone wants to devise such a "column" view of a document,
within a <TABLE>, then the source could be named  columns.pl .
By all means use  frame.pl  as a model for it.
The TOC and/or Index can be included using an <IFRAME> tag.

For that matter, you could access the contents via an <IFRAME>
as well; are there any real differences then to Frameset views?


e.g.
 1. <table> columns aren't resizable within the window,
the way frames are, to see more or less of a wide TOC or Index,
 2. there wouldn't be the ability to reduce the 4-frame views
to a 3-frame one.



Is there a way to direct robots to indexing just the  file_tf.html ?
Is this desirable ?



Further comments welcome.


Regards,

	Ross Moore