Re[2]: Netscape & New HTML
Sheerin, Peter (psheerin@mfi.com)
Thu, 27 Oct 94 09:05:26 PST
There is one concise point that I think should be made. In something
like HTML that is going to be viewed by a wide variety of users, and
by a variety of different browsers(eve if it's only two), and on a
wide variety of operating systems, there needs to be a certian level
of abstraction to ensure that a document is going to make sense
anyplace.
OK, so let's assume that there will only be one viewer (Hear ye, hear
ye! All bow down before the King <insert "NCSA", "Lynx", "Netcruiser",
"Netscape", or the OS/2 web browser>).
Ok, now what the devil is Lynx supposed to do when it runs into
something like <style font=Helvetica size=24pt ...>, when the author
chose to use that instead of <title>? It won't have a clue. That's a
bad example, but shows the extreme of the problem.
Howabout an author specing a font like <style font=WingDings...> or
<style font=Times New Roman ...>, and I happen to be viewing the
document on Netscape for Unix, and don't (and won't ever, likely) have
either of those two fonts?
If we're going to be specing specific fonts, then the *ONLY* way it
should be done is using a standard such as Adobe's multiple-master
fonts, where an approximation can be made on any system configured
with the standard base fonts, or the HTML document includes the
embedded definition of the font.
Otherwise, we need to stick to at least a certian level of abstraction
(like <pre> or <code> instead of <font=courier 10 point> when we want
to specify a fixed-space font) so that different systems can generate
an appropriate view, even if they don't have the specific font which
one particular author decided to use during the blue moon.
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Netscape & New HTML
Author: brian@wired.com at Internet
Date: 10/22/94 3:15 PM
Does anyone have a URL to a really good resource on the net that explains
in nontechnical terms why semantic markup is a good thing? The best I
can say right now is that it expresses ideas at a much higher level than
page layout languages do. And because it's at that higher level, you can
do a lot more with it, it's more reusable, it's more portable, it can be
transmogrified into something completely different yet still convey its
ideas. In an information space where the amount of information present is
just overwhelming, as the internet has become (and it will only get
worse), being able to deal with and navigate among documents semantically
is essential.