I must say a sort of thanks to Brandon for bringing this whole topic up.
Its something that I had been wondering about for a while. Anyway the
key points I picked up on:
1) The WWW is bigger than any single client or protocol.
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Okay this is probably stating the obvious. But thats always a good place
to start. I think that the WWW depends on this nature to form the web in
the 1st place. Having had long discussions with Garrett over recent
weeks about the future of Lynx, and indeed the WWW, I come to see more
and more that one of 2 possibilities are going to occur.
A) A line will have to be drawn at what protocols are allowed within
the WWW. I could start by listing the main ones (http, nntp,
gopher, ftp, nfs/rfs (via file) etc etc) but you also get some of
the more obscure ones such as LDAP and possibly CLDAP when it
arrives that people like INRA are pushing for.
B) People will just keep on adding protocols to the list and the
client size will just keep expanding. Again as Garrett said I
believe this wont increase the size of the clients /that/ much
but it will result in a larger source tree and hence source
complexity. What then? Will I be able to read/send mail from
Mosaic (okay so I dont like mailto being broken in Mosaic and yes
I have told NCSA :). Will the clients end up as being the only
window you ever need open on your desktop? Where then?
2) What is W30
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Im sure I missed this. Where was the "introduction" to W30 placed?
3) Statements from various companies
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One very positive thing that has arisen from all of this is the comments
from people like Spry and NCSA (sorry forgotten the other one) that
they are committed to the way that THIS GROUP is pushing the WWW. My
Electronic Design Methods lecturer always used to talk about technology
pull and application push. Im sure that there is a lesson to be learnt
here from this. The question is are we going to create a technology and
pull the WWW along (which I think is the way to go), or are we going to
let Mosaic, Lynx et al push us to making decisions?
I must admit to being very encouraged by the seemingly unanimous
decisions from the "mosaic-ites" that HTML2.0 and HTML3.[01] are the way
to go. That is always a good start.
Anyway enough from me, Im really only reitterating what other people are
saying. But I do think that this is a valid discussion, since I think it
enables us to get out into the open the direction that we think that the
WWW should be heading.
Sorry this is all a bit disjointed. I really need to wake up :)
Paul
.--------Paul Wain ( X.500 Project Engineer and WWW Person at Brunel)---------.
| Brunel WWW Support: www@brunel.ac.uk MPhil Email: Paul.Wain@brunel.ac.uk |
| Work Email (default): Paul.Wain@brunel.ac.uk (Brunel internal extn: 2391) |
| http://http2.brunel.ac.uk:8080/paul or http://http2.brunel.ac.uk/~eepgpsw |
`-------------------So much to fit in, and so little space!-------------------'