RE: Whitespace

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Reply-To: tcemail!FisherM@dxmint.cern.ch
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 94 12:25:00 PST
From: Fisher Mark <FisherM@is3.indy.tce.com>
Subject: RE: Whitespace
To: www-talk <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>
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The central problem is that different browsers have different levels of 
rendering ability, which is a situation likely to continue for a long (5-10 
years?) time.  Case in point:  at Thomson I use Windows and Windows NT to 
run Cello.  Once I have my Internet connection at home, I will use a 
text-based browser because Windows on a 286 is unacceptably slow.  Many 
companies in the business world (a world that needs to become part of the 
Web for the Web to really become World-Wide) are still depreciating their 
286 and 8088 machines, much less having switched over to video-accelerated 
486s (my work configuration).  Still fewer in the world are people using 
Suns, RS/6000s, HPs, ....

I like Brian Oakley's FACE idea, as an HTML editor could automagically allow 
users to have bold, italics, etc. while concealing the fact (to novices) 
that these are just hints to the browser.  My suspicion is that if a 
document is confusing when read in a single-font browser, it probably also 
is confusing in a 32767-fonts with 28 different sizes and 10 different 
emphasises (sp?) browser.

I see a need for both simple documents (as can be specified under HTML 
Classic :) as well as glossy magazines, weather maps, mathematical papers, 
road atlases, and so on.  It may be that HTML will have to evolve beyond an 
SGML document type to something in the same class as word-processor formats 
to support the multimedia/intermedia (as in FORMS and ISMAP) documents 
future authors will want to write.
======================================================================
Mark Fisher                            Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@tcemail.indy.tce.com           Indianapolis, IN

"Just as you should not underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon
traveling 65 mph filled with 8mm tapes, you should not overestimate
the bandwidth of FTP by mail."