- From: Jewett, Jim J <jim.jewett@eds.com>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 09:59:54 -0500
- To: "'Mark Birbeck'" <mark.birbeck@x-port.net>, 'Tantek Çelik' <tantek@cs.stanford.edu>, "'David Woolley'" <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>, "'Ian Hickson'" <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
David Woolley(?): > I posit that the lack of namespaces was not in small part > responsible for this success. That is to say, I would guess > that every namespace added to a language will dramatically > reduce it's ease of use for authors. Mark Birbeck: > [can't prove a negative] > Is it possible that there is more to the take-up > of HTML than simply 'ease of authoring'? gopher existed first; it didn't go as far. I had used gopher, but never published in it. I don't think I ever got around to learning the syntax, because needing a server was already enough of a barrier to make it not worthwhile unless I already had a large project in mind. HTML had a very small barrier to entry. I could create a page or two (and serve them locally or by FTP) as a trial run. Of course, I could do the same with postscript or LaTeX, but I couldn't easily use those without tools, nor could someone else read them without comparable tools. The simple (and relatively sparse, for handwritten HTML) code meant that even a few minutes could produce something useful. Being *able* to use complicated constructs is fine. Being *forced* to use them (or seeing them in almost every real- world example) presents a barrier to entry - and therefore a barrier to getting the initial critical mass. -jJ
Received on Thursday, 26 February 2004 10:00:19 UTC