Re: Apple Browser

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On 10 Jan 2000 02:19:27 GMT, wbdesnoy@acs2.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron
Desnoyers Winmill) wrote:

>Using logical rather than literal tags allows browsers like Lynx decide
>what to do with text which would normally be displayed in bold or italics
>or underline, even when the terminal does not support those capabilities.
>The use of logical tags allows for this since it tells the computer what
>type of information to convey, not *how* to convey that information.

That's the problem that I'm complaining about.  :-)

If I want to underline the title of a book on my web page, I can't do
it using logical tags because I have no idea what web browser will be
used to view the page and therefore don't know how it will appear to
all users.  If I use a <U> tag, then I know what is going to appear
like for almost all browsers.  If the display doesn't support those
features, it will just appear as plain text.

By using logical tags, I have absolutely no control over the
appearance of a page and if I'm designing a page for a business, they
want to know for sure that the page will look good no matter who looks
at it.  I can't guarantee that using logical tags.  I can't guarantee
it with literal tags either but I know it will look much closer to my
original this way.

If the HTML specs had defined how browsers were to render the logical
tags, then things would be different but they left it completely up to
the browser programmers to display them any way they wanted.

>Logical tags also avoid many of the problems which arise from changing
>or broken standards.  In otherwords, if some version of HTML supported a
>feature which allowed the designer to position a block of text as they
>pleased, and the prior version did not support that feature, the output
>on older browsers would not make sense.  (Which is why word processing
>tend not to be compatible between version, as with true page description
>languages like PostScript or PDF.  It is also why I can fire up a really
>old browser, like Mosiac, and expect to be able to see most of the content
>-- using HTML.)

But a properly written file format like I would design would allow you
to get at the text of a message at the very least but would probably
allow you to access the formatting as well and ignore any new features
just like you you say HTML allows you to do now.

>I'm sorry Jeff, but literal tags are a Bad Thing for the Apple II community.
>(Though I do agree that a preprocessed version of HTML would cut back on
>the amount of data being shuttled back and forth on the internet, and would
>allow older computers to render documents much faster.)

Well, I don't see how they can be a bad thing and I've been using them
for years and haven't heard any complaints yet.  :-)

I can understand why they added some of the tags (ie. ADDRESS and
BLOCKQUOTE) as it makes it easier for programs to search through an
HTML document and pull all addresses or quotes out of a page but when
was the last time you saw or even heard of a program that actually did
this?  It was an interesting idea that I don't think was ever
utilized.

Anyways, like I said, this is all moot as I can't see any of this
being changed unless the Internet 2 folks are listening.  :-)

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| Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in A2Pro on Delphi     |
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