- From: Dave J Woolley <DJW@bts.co.uk>
- Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 16:22:04 +0100
- To: "'www-html@w3.org'" <www-html@w3.org>
> A question for the historians: what was HTML's intent? > [DJW:] Amongst other things, to be simple and not to be another page description language (Postscript, PDF, etc.) or word processing file format (MS Word, Word Perfect, etc.). Unfortunately, what was fogotten is the market demand to use "new" things, even when established technology was either adequate or could be adapted (e.g. PDF now has internet links and, in my view, better expresses the intents of most commercial web page designers, which generally don't include accessibility or machine processability). Unfortunately, I don't have the HTML 1 spec in the office for the exact words. (One interesting quote from Dave Raggett in 1992 <http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/HTMLConst raints.html> is It is required that HTML be a common language between all platforms. This implies no device-specific markup, or anything which requires control over fonts or colors, for example. This is in keeping with the SGML ideal.)
Received on Tuesday, 11 April 2000 11:27:52 UTC