Position paper:
Compact HTML for Small Information Appliances

Tomihisa Kamada,   ACCESS Co.,Ltd.,   tomy@access.co.jp
Yusuke Muraoka,   ACCESS Co.,Ltd.,   muraoka@access.co.jp

The Internet infrastructure has been developed all over the world, and nowadays there are a variety of devices equipped with the Internet-access function, from TV sets to wireless cellular phones. The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is widely accepted and spread as the standard of the WWW(World Wide Web) document format. Such a certain level of HTML is strongly required as a guideline from the manufacturers of small information devices, service providers, carriers, and software developers.

Access, Matsushita, NEC, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, and SONY have submitted the proposal of "Compact HTML" to W3C in February, 1998. The Compact HTML is the specification for small information appliances such as smart phones, smart communicators, mobile PDAs, and etc. Since "Compact HTML" is completely based on the HTML recommendations, we can use millions of HTML-based content resources, various software tools, and public materials (textbooks, magazines, and web information).

In the workshop, we would like to present a brief explanation of Compact HTML, and some improvements according to valuable comments and suggestions for the submission.