[bip] formats in biology

[Andrew Dalke]

On Aug 14, 2007, at 9:27 PM, Diane Trout wrote:
> It occured to me that one under appreciated part of the HTML spec is:
>
> Skip tags you don't understand.
>
> That allows people to roll out new html features without breaking
> existing browsers.

You might also be interested in the discussions of "must-ignore"
and "must-understand."  For example,
  http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/09/On-XML-Language- 
Design

     If you’re going to be designing an XML language, you owe it
     to yourself to do some of this thinking yourself, if you want
     it to have any kind of future.

     The two most important things to think about are called  
“MustIgnore”
     and “MustUnderstand”, and they mean about what they sound like;
     while they encapsulate fine old engineering principles, as labels
     they are new things in the world, only having achieved common
     currency in recent years.

As a counter-example in HTML, consider the <SCRIPT> tag
and the <NOSCRIPT>.  If a browser didn't handle Javascript
it would ignore the SCRIPT tag and show the Javascript contents,
which isn't what was expected.

				Andrew
				dalke at dalkescientific.com