>> >We really need to think about who in the industry is in the best
>> >position to implement/control monolithic standards and monolithic browsers.
>> >It isn't CERN, NCSA or the community of Web hackers, that's for sure!
>
>and Chris Lilley replied:
>
>> I would like to see some support for this rather airy dismissal.
>>
>> >The
>> >only people in a position to implement a monolithic browser are those with
>> >dedicated (and large) programming staffs --- such as Framemaker or Microsoft.
>>
>> Again I would like to see a reasoned argument for this contentious statement.
>
>It's surprising that this is the first comment about my article. I was
>going to put in more argument on this point but others here thought that it
>actually detracted from the other points that I was making. Live and learn
>I suppose.
[much reasoned argument deleted]
My comment is to Chris Lilley ...
<flame>
As a long suffering Windows 3.1 user I would not be very happy delegating
the task of developing a character set for my pocket calculator to
Microsoft. Cobol, love it or hate it, is a far better paradigm. The
COmmon Business Oriented Language was a 1950's US Government inspired
software standard for a specific purpose, you might not like cobol but it
is still used today in almost exactly the same form as it first appeared.
I would favour a (preferably inter-) governmental standard for a
distributed information system (www, gopher - call it what you will).
If this is not possible then why not CERN or NCSA, after all the folks at
these sites have already achieved a great deal in terms of information
architecture (HTML) and distribution (httpd).
Don't forget - Windows 3.1 was shipped as marketable with some thousands of
known bugs - do we want this to happen to cyberplace ???
</flame>
grunt
Al. <-:< (zpalastair@grid.unl.ac.uk)