Re: DIV/CLASS

['>>' is Lee]
>>While we'd all love to see browsers become SGML-based, that isn't
>>going to happen; not now, not in the future.
>
>Huh? Precognitive, you know the future or something? I guess we'll just
>close up shop here and go home. Damn, and we were so close...
>
>Funny thing is, out with the SGML bathwater goes complex stylesheets,
>document validation, SGML application-independent browsers (HTML 2.0, 3.0,
>4.0, etc.), and a host of other features.
>
>The first part of your statement, "we'd all love to see browsers become
>SGML-based" is a rather grand assumption. There are plenty of people I can
>think of that would rather not see that happen. The second part, well,
>there's simply no good reason why that would follow from the given reasons.
>Why couldn't an "SGML-based browser" (by which I'm assuming you mean one
>that builds a document representation based on parsing a document instance
>against its declarated DTD) simply have corrective error behavior?

Very well said, Murray.

I suspect (much safer than predicting! :)) that Web publishing will move 
towards SGML or its successor (whatever that may be), because of the 
increased power and flexibility offered by a document specification 
metalanguage (SGML), just as PC software programming has moved from assembly 
language to Visual Basic during my professional career.  Unless Moore's Law 
falters, Real Soon Now there will be computers fast enough and with memory 
enough that the power and flexibility of SGML will seem a natural fit with 
the needs of browser users and other Web client users.  Remember, it hasn't 
been all _that_ long (2 years) since the debate on whether inline images 
belong on the Web -- evolution is pretty speedy here on the Internet.
======================================================================
Mark Leighton Fisher                   Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com                   Indianapolis, IN

Received on Thursday, 16 May 1996 11:30:54 UTC