Re: So, what's left?

On 24 Jan 2000, Daniel S. Riley wrote:

> Because almost 7 years ago, Marc Andreessen didn't listen to Tim
> Berners-Lee when Tim suggested something like[1]
> 
>   <a name=fig1 href="fghjkdfghj" REL="EMBED, PRESENT">Figure</a>
> 
> instead of <img>.  I often wonder what HTML would look like now
> if Marc had listened to Tim.

The ALT attribute was due to Lou Montulli (developing Lynx), in order
to have something to work with rather than nothing at all, once it
became clear (with all the hallelujahs going around) that IMG was so
k3wl. 

The HTML+ Discusion Document was published in Nov 93.  Here's what it
had to offer:

  http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/HTMLPlus/htmlplus_35.html

That was Nov 93.  Marc A and Jim Clark founded Netscape in Apr 94... 
and lo, even more hallelujahs... In '95, Netscape declined to
implement FIG because it was "too resource intensive" or somesuch.
The "documentation" they had on the subject may still be available on
their site.  At any rate, plenty of people read it, and because
Netscape was the ruling Cat's Whiskers, naturally the Official Line
got parroted far and wide... even more hallelujahs...

Wait!  I found it

  http://home.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/html_extensions_3.html
 
And here's the parrot I remember

  http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=117793454

> [1] I'd like to cite a reference for this, but I can't find a
> www-talk archive that goes back to February of 1993--www.eit.com
> is long gone, gummo.stanford.edu has lost its content,
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/
> 
> is missing 1993 and 1994,

All true.  Gummo went off line ages ago (some time in 96)

> http://sh.w3.mag.keio.ac.jp/Style/History/www.eit.com/www.lists/

Wow!  Looks like a saved copy.  Thanks for the URL.

> is missing www-talk.1993q1.  I find the apparent loss of this
> history very depressing.  

All too often, history turns out to be inconvenient.  

> Well, since I can't find an archive,

I have my own copy of the EIT archive (and if anyone is interested, of
the IETF HTML WG that used to be archived at www.acl.lanl.gov)  Here's
the 1st Quarter of www-talk, in Unix mbox format:

 http://www.nyct.net/~aray/temp/www-talk-1993q1.mbx


Arjun

Received on Monday, 24 January 2000 18:56:48 UTC