Re: Mosaic vs WWW

Arnold Bloemer (bloemer@tnt.uni-hannover.de)
Wed, 24 Nov 93 13:55:35 +0100

> From www-talk-request@dxcern.cern.ch Wed Nov 24 12:36:16 1993
> To: Reed Wade <wade@cs.utk.edu>
> Cc: ccprl@cranfield.ac.uk, www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
> Subject: Re: Mosaic vs WWW
> From: "Peter Lister, Cranfield Computer Centre" <P.Lister@cranfield.ac.uk>
>
> > That sort of thing is inevitable. I'd consider it a good sign.
> > It shows that www and mosaic are in use by non-experts.
>
> Use by non-experts is good, confusion is not. Mosaic is a particular
> WWW browser, and it has a cute name. One of the differences between WWW
> and Gopher (and sadly it is a really *major* difference to those who
> don't appreciate the technical points) is that Gopher - the entire
> system - has a cute name. And most people remember cute names. Had WWW
> been christened by CERN as "Proton", "Accelerator", or even "Fred",
> many more people would be happier with it.

Full support to your opinion !

I critized the lack of a single speakable and easily remembered term
one year ago. The curent situation in WWW is a horror scenario for
everybody who has some knowledge about Corporate Identity.

When you browse through comp.infosystems.www for example you will
find the following terms for WWW:

WWW, www, W3, w3, World-Wide Web, World Wide Web, world-wide-web,
WorldWideWeb, Web, web ...

and even worse there is no WWW Server like a Gopher Server but there
are HTTP Server and Pages are written in HTML which can be served by
different httpd's and ftpd's. And there is not really a World Wide Web
page or format like a Gopher menu, instead we speak about HTML Pages
which is just one but the native format (or not ?) for WWW. WWW should
be the the name for a universe of information in different formats. And
www is one browser for WWW. And there are a lot of other terms which
are essential to understand WWW.

Even if you are a WWW Wizard, it is hard to always use the right
terms. So nobody should wonder that a non-expert just talks about
Mosaic, Mosaic Server and Mosaic Pages.

I think it is overdue to setup some kind of Corporate Identity for the
World-Wide Web. Otherwise we will loose control over the correct usage
of the relevant terms and at least the Mosaic Users will use Mosaic as
the single, easily remembered term for everything around WWW.

Arnold

________________________________________________________________________________

Dipl.-Ing. Arnold Bloemer Universitaet Hannover
Institut fuer Theoretische Nachrichtentechnik
und Informationsverarbeitung
bloemer@tnt.uni-hannover.de Appelstrasse 9A
fax: +49 511 762-5333 D-30167 Hannover
phone: +49 511 762-5320 Germany
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