Working HP0 HP1 HP2 and HP3 Tag Element Example

Note: Since this file deals with tags deleted prior to the introduction of HTML 2.0, in order to make it validate I have written it to the earliest type of HTML that can comply with an SGML DTD. It cannot be validated by any current approved public DTD accepted by the Web Consortium validator, but the validator can now validate to any provided DTD, though it will provide warnings about the Document Type not being in the validator's catalog. This file additionally uses the obsolete <HEADER> tags instead of the later <HEAD> tags.

The oldest specifically known tags to disappear were the Highlighted Phrase tags, a basic and foundational part of SGML, the language behind HTML. These standard tags were replaced in the earliest workable HTML DTD with the more understandable and easily used tags and . After all, for italic is intuitively obvious, as is for bold. In this short file I wish to demonstrate (and allow the user to test) the <HP0>, <HP1>, <HP2>, and <HP3> tags. Only very few of the most ancient user agents (browsers) appear to have ever supported these tags, so don't be surprised when theses tags have no effect.

By all records, there appear to have been only four of these tags, but one could postulate an additional four which could either be for reverse video, blinking, or underline. So now, I introduce a small test phrase:

<P>Then I realized, <HP1>He had hidden the antidote in the other car!</HP1>

If your browser can support these highlighted phrase tags, what you get should have the first three words in normal text and the remainder in italics:

Then I realized, He had hidden the antidote in the other car!

I doubt any recent browser will show any changes in the above example, since the HPn tags are so incredibly old and so long ago deleted. Furthermore, it is not clear what good the <HP0> tag would be since these early DTD's did not allow for the nesting of these highlighting tags. Of course, <HP3> at least did have the advantage that, given that such tags could not be nested, this did provide for a phrase to be both bold and italic.

There are four of these tags, and each one of the establishes a particular combination of italic and bold. In this respect they differ from the and tags. Here are the meanings for each:

<DL><DT>&lt;HP0&gt;<DD>This is for <HP0>normal typeface</HP0>, no italics and
no bold (default, or no effect).
<DT>&lt;HP1&gt;<DD>This is for <HP1>italic</HP1> typeface.
<DT>&lt;HP2&gt;<DD>This is for <HP2>bold</HP2> typeface.
<DT>&lt;HP3&gt;<DD>This is for <HP3>bold italic</HP3> typeface.</DL>

<HP0>: This is for normal typeface, no italics and no bold (default, or no effect).
<HP1>: This is for italic typeface.
<HP2>: This is for bold typeface.
<HP3>: This is for bold italic typeface.

One should at once be readily able to see a difference between the functioning of these tags from the and tags that replaced them. In particular, unlike and which must be nested to make a bold italic the single tag <HP3> effects the same result in one tag. Given that, one must wonder what the <HP0> tag would be for, since it only sets things to the default. Perhaps it was thought that later on these tags could be nested, and then (for example, in my above example), I would have been able to further emphasize the word "other" by using <HP0> to make it normal text:

<P>Then I realized, <HP1>He had hidden the antidote in the <HP0>other</HP0> car!</HP1>

Of course, one other possbility is that the HPn tags might also have functioned in a kind of "stream of consciousness" mode, something like the much later <BASEFONT> tag would do. It would, in this case, simply change things from one state to the next, until another is encountered as the file is read. So in such a way, instead of writing </HP1> one would write <HP0> to end the italic phrase and return to normal for the remainder of the document. Needless to say, while such HTML coding might be easy for Joe Sixpack to follow or program, it is (from a computer standpoint) extremely poor form, and should never have been tolerated. I am not using that form in this file.

Recommended Implementation

The <HPn> tags should be able to function either with their closing tag restoring the previous condition before the opening tag (or its matching opening tag if these are nested, or as unary tags, similar to <BASEFONT> which simply set the highlighting from the point at which it appears until the next one or the end of the file. and tags and their ending tags would adjust the one aspect they refer to, e. g. "normal text <HP3>bold italic bold only </HP3> back to normal." A </HPn> closing tag should restore the condition present at its matching opening tag, despite any other improperly nested <HPn> or </HPn> opening or closing tags in between. If it has no matching opening tag, it should do nothing.

Upgrades and Downgrades

Possible downgrades are:

None - These tags are go clear back to SGML and have no specific equivalent in anything previously acceptable to any HTML machine.

Possible upgrades are:

and - Standard HTML Highlighting tags. These are the tags that have been most used to create these results that <HPn> tags were meant to accomplish. To duplicate what <HP3> would have done, the and tags can be nested, thus: ""HALT!" he said." which would put the word "HALT" in the same sort of bold italics as <HP3> should. There is no exact equivalent to the virtually useless <HP0>, but one could use it to close out any bold or italic section with their end tags and reopen the same as before.
Highlighting with Style Sheets - Phrase Highlighting is a presentation feature (like for example) and as such something which really ought to be relegated to the Style sheets.

This <HPn> demonstration file, "hpn.html," is "HTML 0.d" compliant.

The Style sheet demonstration file "hpn1.html" is HTML 4.01 Strict compliant.

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