The Future of HTML: A Modest Proposal

David Singer (singer@almaden.ibm.com)

May 5, 1998

HTML 4.0 is Overwhelmingly Successful

• Millions and Millions of Pages
• Millions of Authors
• Thousands of Books and Articles
• Hundreds of Elements
• More than One Browser

Some Requirements on the future of HTML

• XML compliance
• Strict DTD
• Toleration of bad markup
• Toleration of unknown tags
• Validation of markup
• Sophisticated editing tools
• Hand-editable HTML
• Inclusion of:
  • Math
  • Music
  • Metadata
  • More
• Better Accessibility
• More Forms
• Support for small/mobile devices

The Requirements are Contradictory

• So what do we do?

We have learned much

• We need a common starter set of elements for common items, such as:
  • Paragraphs
  • Lists
  • Sections
  • Tables
  • Images
  • Forms
• We need extensibility for domain-specific markup:
  • Math
  • Music
  • Metadata
• We need composability for mixed-domain documents:
  • For example, even Math textbooks need paragraphs
• We need externalizable formatting

Declare Victory on HTML 4.0

• Extending HTML 4.0 will be difficult
• Converting HTML 4.0 to an XML application will be difficult
• Declare HTML 4.0 to be a "legacy" document format and stop enhancing it

In other words:

• The Future of HTML as we know it should be:
  • Nasty, Brutish, and Short

So what comes next?

• HTML 2000
  • A true XML application
• Informed by HTML 4.0 but not bound by it
• Designed to be extended with:
  • Additional DTDs (like MathML) via namespaces
  • Externalized formatting via XSL
• And of course, it's Y2K-compliant