Re: Description or Abstract?

Davide Musella (davide@jargo.itim.mi.cnr.it)
Thu, 4 Jul 1996 14:21:51 -0100


> >I have seen a post here advocating the use of <META HTTP-EQUIV=abstract
> >CONTENT="..."> and have set up my pages to use it. Recently, while
> >looking at altavista and infoseek I notice they used <META
> >HTTP-EQUIV=description ...>. In fact, infoseek says that if description
> >is used, they will display that in the results page.
normally they use META NAME.

> That's pretty crazy. META HTTP-EQUIV is used to specify HTTP document headers.
> "Description:" wasn't an HTTP header, last time I checked. InfoSeek
> is violating standards here.
uh? Are you sure... HTTP-EQUIV is used to bind an element to the HTTP
response header, but you must consider these elements as extensions of the
HTTP response header (allowed in the extension header field)

> However, if this was a conscious decision
> on their part, it is rather interesting: it allows you to get your images,
> sound bites, etc., indexed by sending them out with Description: headers.
uh? How can you use a META tag in a GIF or JPEG file?
you mean that it could exist a similar method for the image file, maybe.

> >My question then is which should I use? Do all search engines that pay
> >attention to stuff like this use description, or do some use abstract, or
> >both?
> If a search engine is willing to make this info available, the place to
> find out is their WWW pages ...
The problem is that there isn't an accepted standard to describe these meta info
and now there is the tendency to describe new methodolgies and not to formalize
the existents.

Davide

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Davide Musella
Institute for Multimedia Technologies, National Research Council, Milan, ITALY
tel. +39.(0)2.70643271
e-mail: davide@jargo.itim.mi.cnr.it http://jargo.itim.mi.cnr.it/