Re[2]: Netscape & New HTML

     There is one concise point that I think should be made. In something 
     like HTML that is going to be viewed by a wide variety of users, and 
     by a variety of different browsers(eve if it's only two), and on a 
     wide variety of operating systems, there needs to be a certian level 
     of abstraction to ensure that a document is going to make sense 
     anyplace.
     
     OK, so let's assume that there will only be one viewer (Hear ye, hear 
     ye! All bow down before the King <insert "NCSA", "Lynx", "Netcruiser", 
     "Netscape", or the OS/2 web browser>).
     
     Ok, now what the devil is Lynx supposed to do when it runs into 
     something like <style font=Helvetica size=24pt ...>, when the author 
     chose to use that instead of <title>? It won't have a clue. That's a 
     bad example, but shows the extreme of the problem.
     
     Howabout an author specing a font like <style font=WingDings...> or 
     <style font=Times New Roman ...>, and I happen to be viewing the 
     document on Netscape for Unix, and don't (and won't ever, likely) have 
     either of those two fonts?
     
     If we're going to be specing specific fonts, then the *ONLY* way it 
     should be done is using a standard such as Adobe's multiple-master 
     fonts, where an approximation can be made on any system configured 
     with the standard base fonts, or the HTML document includes the 
     embedded definition of the font.
     
     Otherwise, we need to stick to at least a certian level of abstraction 
     (like <pre> or <code> instead of <font=courier 10 point> when we want 
     to specify a fixed-space font) so that different systems can generate 
     an appropriate view, even if they don't have the specific font which 
     one particular author decided to use during the blue moon.


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Netscape & New HTML 
Author:  brian@wired.com at Internet
Date:    10/22/94 3:15 PM
     
Does anyone have a URL to a really good resource on the net that explains 
in nontechnical terms why semantic markup is a good thing?  The best I 
can say right now is that it expresses ideas at a much higher level than 
page layout languages do.  And because it's at that higher level, you can 
do a lot more with it, it's more reusable, it's more portable, it can be 
transmogrified into something completely different yet still convey its 
ideas.  In an information space where the amount of information present is 
just overwhelming, as the internet has become (and it will only get 
worse), being able to deal with and navigate among documents semantically 
is essential.

Received on Thursday, 27 October 1994 17:09:00 UTC