>Would it be correct to say that the earliest idea of the WWW was to
>offer a single consistent user interface to different network
>services, rather than a world wide hypertext system?
This question appears to confuse servers and browsers. A single user
interface is, by definition, a browser, whilst a world wide hypertext
system, although not necessarily a server, is definitely not a browser. If
you look at the original www browser it does *not* fit the bill for a multi
purpose browser.
Tim Berners-Lee is interviewed about the origins and future of the web in
the October issue of "Internet World". This article may also be available
electronically but I cannot say where. He comments in this article that he
"... would like a single user interface for all of these things [usenet,
e-mail and the web] ..." which would seem to suggest that the original
intention was a distributed hypertext system.
Alastair. (who is virtually sigless)