scott preece <preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com>
> I think the coming of Acrobat is going to make the Web-as-we-know-it
> much less useful. I suspect common ("less-skilled-user) tools will make
> WYSIWYG preparation and Acrobat distribution the norm, losing us the
> gains we've made towards meaningfully tagged content. What the world
> *really* needs is SGML markup, with a way to send SGML-to-HTML
> conversion information along with the document; what I think we're going
> to get is pictures of information...
I couldn't agree more. You won't be surprised, of course, since
we've released an SGML browser for the web.
Microsoft is going to be (or already?) distributing an MS Word viewer, and
I think that may be even worse. HoTMetaL PRO 2 will open Word files and save
them as HTML files, but we can't give that functionality away in the free
version... and in any case there is no easy way to open a PostScript file
and save it as HTML, so `fighting' Microsoft in that way is easier than
`fighting' Adobe. Not that it's really a fight.
People will quickly get sick of PDF files as they get more common, and their
AOL/Prodigy/whatever bills go way up.
We have to make sure that HTML 3 and the associated style sheet work gets
done soon enough and well enough that HTML remains viable.
Lee