one author's perspective on HTML (a modest proposal)
Philip Greenspun <philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu>
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Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 21:06:39 --100
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From: Philip Greenspun <philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu>
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Subject: one author's perspective on HTML (a modest proposal)
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Most books and magazines are presented as paragraphs stuck together
(no blank line) with each new paragraph indicated with an indented
first line, e.g.,
-----------------------------example of standard book
We all laughed when we remembered the two saleswomen
from an advertising agency who came by our plush new
Cambridge offices. They were showing us their book when
George, who was lying near one woman, started to make
whooping noises.
"What's that?" asked the woman.
"He's going to throw up," I responded while quickly
marshaling Wall Street Journals to place underneath his
mouth.
The women shrieked and closed themselves into a
windowless, unlit, 2'x2' closet, refusing to emerge for
several minutes.
Trying to numb myself with fatigue, I ran six miles
through the woods near my house, up and down hills that
overlook the city and ocean
-----------------------------
Note that the blank line here conveys something significant, i.e., the
end of one story and the beginning of another, without forcing the
author to explicitly start a new chapter.
Here is how Mosaic would display it:
-----------------------------example of same text from Mosaic
We all laughed when we remembered the two saleswomen
from an advertising agency who came by our plush new
Cambridge offices. They were showing us their book when
George, who was lying near one woman, started to make
whooping noises.
"What's that?" asked the woman.
"He's going to throw up," I responded while quickly
marshaling Wall Street Journals to place underneath his
mouth.
The women shrieked and closed themselves into a
windowless, unlit, 2'x2' closet, refusing to emerge for
several minutes.
Trying to numb myself with fatigue, I ran six miles
through the woods near my house, up and down hills that
-----------------------------
This is very different and much of the author's intent has been
lost.
It isn't enough to say "you have <PRE>, what are you complaining
about?" because that precludes the reader from choosing his own Mosaic
window size, i.e., line length.
Given the prevalence of the first style of formatting (look at any
novel), HTML should support this expression.
I propose the command <NOVEL> that will tell the displayer to break
paragraphs with indentations rather than blank lines.
-- Philip Greenspun
-------------------------------------------------------------
MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
545 Technology Square, Rm 433, Cambridge, MA 02139, (617) 253-8574
Personal Web URL: http://martigny.ai.mit.edu/~philg/philg.html