Re: new HTML spec, sample implementation

• Mail folder: WWW Talk Jan-Mar 1993 Archives
• Next message: Kevin Hoadley: "RE: Re HTTP2: caching and copyright"
• Previous message: Tim Berners-Lee: "Re: new HTML spec, sample implementation "

Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 11:42:24 +0100
From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>
Message-id: <9301121042.AA00938@www3.cern.ch>
To: Dan Connolly <connolly@pixel.convex.com>
Subject: Re: new HTML spec, sample implementation 
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Reply-To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch

> The "Hypertext Markup Language" document I wrote was supposed
> to replace the root of the HTML documentation. I suggest we
> merge them. I'll work on it and let you know what I come
> up with.

There is of course nothing wrong with having two roots -- one as a  
specification and one as a user guide.   The specification should be  
more formal and use the correct terminology without apology, the  
burden of understanding being on the reader.  The user guide must  
start with the vocabulary expected of the new reader, and introduce  
things in an "easy" order. The onus of explanation is on the writer  
of the guide in this case, as we WANT people to write/output HTML.

Ideally of couse one would rewrite the whole thing but we haven't  
time, so the details about each element had best be represented just  
once.

I think we need a version of www which runs off RFCxxx-conforming  
RFCs, unless someone can do it with TeX.  Then we can feed it a  
stream of concatenated HTML.  We will need it for HTTP2 too.

Tim