From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <3E416C6A.7040903@nas.com> From: Jack Johnson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2a) Gecko/20020910 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Webbrowser References: <20030205191626.18577.qmail@g.bio.cse.psu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 11:56:26 -0800 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 4f727162-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Scott Schwartz wrote: > By the way, in my opinion the only reason HTML survived at all is because > of NCSA Mosaic, which was the first fun way for people to look at other > people's GIFs, and the hacky notation it adopted was simple enough and > just barely good enough for the crude page layout that people wanted > to do, with absolutely no consideration for SGML sensibilities until > long after the fact. The same could be said of email's roots, where now it's often encumbered/enhanced by enriched text, HTML formatting, or alternate character sets that weren't necessarily envisioned previously. We always try to use our tools for something other than their original intent. What you see as HTML's failing is also HTML's strength. It's more *our* failing for using it as some kind of panacea. Plus, HTML over HTTP beats sucking down PostScript files via gopher, wais or ftp. After all, where was troff's presence during the gopher years? What ever happened to HyperTeX ( http://xxx.lanl.gov/hypertex/ )? There are always better alternatives, but more often we're willing to settle for just good enough. -Jack