Re: LYNX-DEV Lynx and the Future of HTML

[Chris Gray]

On Sat, 28 Feb 1998, David Woolley wrote:

> I've just been skimming a book on HTML design at a local book shop
> and it seems to me that, even with the best use of style sheets, HTML
> is irrevocably headed towards a page description language.

Sounds as if the author did no more than skim through some old magazine
articles; that was Conventional Wisdom of a year or more ago.  I trust
you didn't buy the book?

> People are going to ask to be able to view the resulting HTML in Lynx,
> because Lynx is an HTML browser.
> 
> However, I think the Lynx community is going to have to accept that
> it is better to be good at handling pages that are designed for
> content rather than image, rather than keep hacking it to make
> it work with the latest output from the design consultancies.

The "design consultancies" have done a lot of damage in the past, but
nowadays they seem to mostly use HTML generating tools, and these tools
*are* getting better.  Yes, really: at least they don't output
<B><P>....<P>.....</B> any more.  Of course the des-cons then start
looking for the options to undermine the tool, but before they can
thoroughly sabotage it, another account beckons ...

> Incidentally, I could see no mention of Accept-Language sensitivity
> in any of the books, so I can't see that many web designers are going
> to make use of the one major aspect of HTML 4 that text mode browsers
> can do very well, although it will still help outside of the anglophone
> parts of the world.

Don't quite get this.  Are you saying that e.g. Netscape 4 doesn't send
Accept-Language headers?  By coincidence I was just fiddling with the
relevant menu item today, but then it turned out that our connection to
the Internet was down ...