- From: Dave J Woolley <david.woolley@bts.co.uk>
- Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 15:42:42 +0100
- To: www-svg@w3c.org
> From: Josh Zeidner [SMTP:jmz_phylogenic@hotmail.com] > > HTML lacks conceptual integrity when it comes to things like forms. In > many ways HTML is a "presentation" language( if youll allow me to make > this > [DJW:] HTML is most definitely not a presentational language; it is a document structuring language. It gets used as a presentational language for historical/marketing reasons, at least one of which is the failure of Adobe to react to the emergence of the web quickly enough, in my view. It is very ugly as a presentational language compared with older languages, like PostScript/PDF. > be processed( or sent over the wire in this case ). Also in this case the > > idea of "forms" are *very* specific to a data interchange protocol: http. > [DJW:] You can print the result of filling in PDF forms. > SVG, in my view is not intended to be anything more than a way of > describing > static and animated graphics. Once we start supporting various data [DJW:] HTML was not intended to be used as a presentational language, but that is its main current use. I think a similar fate will rapidly befall SVG. The mass market doesn't like component solutions; it wants one thing to do everything (trivial example: meta http-equiv, rather than configuring servers). The result tends to be that every cleanly targetted software standard eventually degrades to be like every other one because people won't accept it being lean and mean. HTML was explicitly intended not to compete with word processors and page description languages, but now does exactly that. My expectation is that any failure to recognize that people will try to use SVG as the only tool for creating web pages will either result in uncontrolled feature creeep, or a plethora of popular how to books describing how to abuse it to do what the market wants; for HTML these tend to be based on the empirical behaviour of browsers, but written as though they were about he definitive behaviour of the language. SVG is a real presentational language, unlike HTML, and most designers want a presentational language, whilst HTML is only forced into that mould. It is much too powerful just to be used for diagrams; if support becomes universal it will be used for formless navigation and catalogue type pages, and people will look for ways of achieving the same look and feel on the form pages. HTML lost its integrity by deliberately not targetting commercial wants; I think SVG will go the same way if care is not taken. -- --------------------------- DISCLAIMER --------------------------------- Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of BTS.
Received on Friday, 20 October 2000 10:43:26 UTC