Re: ASSERTION, QUESTION, SUGGESTION - final draft

From: tim finin (finin@cs.umbc.edu)
Date: 04/15/02


> Anyone who actually produces webpage markup had better be able to see
> HTML, and even get reasonably proficient at recognizing what is wrong
> with it, even if they use a highlevel tool such as Dreamweaver. In

If do do anything fancy in dreamweaver, the html it generates is 
pretty hard to grok. And don't get me started on Microsoft Frontpage.

> fact I'd bet that much of the reason for HTMLs initial success was
> that it is in fact fairly easy to learn how to use it (in at least a
> basic way) even when viewed as source in a normal text editor. OWL
> needs to be in the same ballpark if it is not to go the way of the
> Dodo. ...

I agree that HTML took off because it was relatively easy for people to
understand and to generate or edit by hand.  But the situation has
evolved and is continuing to evolve.  Javascript, CSS, XML, etc. have
complicated things.  Take a look at a typical page, like http://www.nyt.com/.
It's not like the simple html we used to type up in emacs.

It could be that OWL will have to follow a similar path, from simple
easy to understand and manually manipulate text to something made by
and for machines.  I still predict that the logical end is a language
like postscript -- good for machines and extreme hackers and bad
for the rest of us.


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