Re: Whitespace

Rich Wiggins (WIGGINS@msu.edu)
Thu, 13 Jan 94 00:20:20 EST


>I think the real driving force behind the welter of markup now in HTML+
>is the desire to make posters, or pictures, or whatever you might call
>them -- non-textual art -- combined with the misapprehension that HTML+
>is the only document formatting language we can use.

I think people want to be able to transmit the same sort of documents
over networks that they read on paper. Documents rendered by Mosaic
are such a leap forward over the old flat ASCII titles with images
as separate titles that our collective appetite has been whetted;
it's not posters people want to deliver, it's glossy magazine
articles with sound and video attachments. It's anything that
you can do on a CD ROM.

So don't look at a poster on the wall as what folks would like to
transmit. Look at the last issue of Byte or Wired, and add videos.
I understand the standard arguments about markup being to denote
semantics not precise presentation, but there's a revolution of
rising expectations here.

/rich