Re: misuse / abuse of html (was Re: CAPT

On Fri, 11 Jul 1997, Chapman, Hass wrote:

> Lets not get carried away with this, how many visitors to web sites use 
> non-graphical browsers? And how many of those have ONLY a non-graphical 
> browser?

This is ridiculous.  The purpose of HTML is to provide a representation
independent markup language.  If you are looking for a visual markup
language only, there are plenty of better options out there.  (PDF, TeX,
Postscript, TIFF, RTF all come to mind).

> The web is popular *because* it is a GRAPHICAL method of presenting 
> information. The Internet was not very widely used until the web came along.

Nonsense.  The internet was very widely used from the late seventies on.
the web as we know it is a recent innovation, and still only accounts
for a fraction (albeit a large one) of the internet's usage.  At any
rate, what has caused the massive growth in internet use in the last
several years is the dropping cost of access.

> HTML is a method of creating graphical (or intuitive) and interactive access 
> to information.

HTML's strength lies in its ability to present information so that it
can be rendered in a wide range of media, from graphical browsers to
braile, from dumb terminals to speech to the printed page.  In support
of this, HTML represents information according to it's intent rather
than according to intended appearance.  The fact that many people are
using graphical browsers is a poor excuse to abandon this functionality.

--
				Jim Wise
				jim.wise@turner.com

Received on Friday, 11 July 1997 17:43:25 UTC