🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 14 Jan 1997 15:41:44 GMT, liam@htmlhelp.com (Liam Quinn)
wrote:

>Have you ever looked at some of the innovations proposed by the W3C?
>No?  Then how can you make such a statement?

Who said I didn't???

I read about the style sheets, the new tags (<DIV> and other), the use
of symbols (for scientific notations (maths, physics, chemistry))

In essence these are welcome additions to HTML whci will only make it
richer... but the truth is that the use of the Internet has shifted.
No longer the WWW is used to propagate scientific documents, but it's
focussing on different markets. In these markets these new addtions to
HTML have little or no added value.

>Take a look at things like HTML 3.0 (dead because Netscape and
>Microsoft preferred their own "innovation") and you'll see what
>innovation truly is.  Don't forget about Cascading Style Sheets, which
>have been around for years, but are only now gaining attention at
>"innovative" companies like Microsoft and Netscape.  And what about
>PNG?  With all of its advantages over GIF and its promotion by the
>W3C, it still is not supported by Microsoft or Netscape.  Where's the
>innovation?

JAVA, JScript, VBScript, Javascript, ActiveX, ASP documents etc,
etc,...

If you compare supporting a new graphic fileformat to the addition of
interactivity and client side processing... what would be the most
interesting feature?

>>Quite honestly, the entire paragraph formatting tags have always been
>>a real screw up. It all started with the wrong implementation of the
>><p> tag. It should have been <p> </p> and later on extended with <p
>>aling=left|right|center|justified> </p>. Now we can use 3 different
>>tags <p>; <p align=...> </p> or <div align=...> </div>... oops and of
>>course <center> </center>... so who's to blame???
>
>Who invented <CENTER> when <P ALIGN=center> made perfect sense?

Netscape. (did I pass? BTW, I never claimed Netscape or MS to be my
heroes!)

>BTW, there is a difference between <P> and <DIV>.  Do some reading at
>the W3C instead of at Netscape and you'll see what I mean.

I know there is a difference, but I didn't want to start an expose on
all different structural tags.

>This isn't accurate at all, as I've pointed out above.  One could say
>that *standardization* at the W3C is slow, but this is natural and, in
>fact, necessary to ensure that a standard is completely accurate.

But in real life browsers are adding new features all the time and
seem not to give a damn about the standards, then what is the use of
an "institute" like the W3C? Imagine a similar attitude towards ASTM,
DIN, ISO etc...

>You might think that without competition the W3C would lack
>innovation, but, in practice, that hasn't proven to be the case.
>Perhaps it's because the individuals at the W3C don't innovate because
>it's their jobs, but because they love the Web--many of the Web's
>pioneers are at the W3C.

Don't get me wrong... with innovation I mean "looking beyond the
borders of conventional HTML" What the W3C does is improving and
finetuning (and playing policeman, I suppoce), it's not innovating.

>>Since HTML 2.0 I have the impression that the W3C is drifting apart
>>from the Real World...
>
>Can you explain this?

Sure, create a real HTML3.2 document and feed it to Netscape 3.0 (or
4.0) and MSIE 3.0 and see what happens. How much is truely understood
by the browsers? And then take a close look at the high tech sites...
where's the HTML gone??? I once made a simple page based on Future
Splash technology. It's really great, this technology... unfortunately
the HTML document was reduced to a container for the ActiveX control.

Greetings, D.


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