Re: Improving the Web.
peter@easthope.ca wrote:
> Ref. https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2023/01/msg00110.html
>
> From: David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
> Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2023 13:26:54 -0600
> > "Debian helps fix the Web." Not a headline I expect ever to see, ...
>
> Too simplisitic and a Web topic rather than Debian topic. But Debian
> attracts some formal language experts and some programmers.
>
> A browser can handle more than one language. Firefox
> 128.13.0esr(64-bit) opens PDF along with HTML.
>
> I imagine three stages.
> (1) Identify a formal language improving upon HTML/CSS. Not a new
> idea. I've seen Display PostScript and NeWS discussed. Further
> development necessary.
HTML (badly, improperly) defines semantics. <p> is a paragraph.
<li> is a list item. <div> is a mess, but it's supposed to be a
division in the text. When you have the semantic representation,
you can render it to anything you like: text terminals, tiny
screens, gigantic screens, audio readers.
PostScript and its encapsulated, reduced and compressed
successor, PDF, define rendering without being at all concerned
about semantics. When you have rendering without semantics, you
cannot do anything guaranteed useful with it except to render it
to a device of approximately the target characteristics.
Trying to replicate paper documents anywhere except in the
narrow scope of trying to produce a paper docunent is a bad
move.
-dsr-
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