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Completely true, but for fairness the reason is that the web was not created as a tool for text layout. The goal was exactly the opposite, to make the text inde
by coliveira 10y ago
Completely true, but for fairness the reason is that the web was not created as a tool for text layout. The goal was exactly the opposite, to make the text independent of layout and displayed differently in the different browsers. Doing good text layout on the web is practically an intractable problem. On the other hand, we already have software capable of doing this, such as PDF.
- username223 10y agoI don't know if Tim Berners-Lee thought about layout. SGML was text with semantic information, and HTML was text with cross-references. Back when displays were tiny low-resolution things little better than terminals, and most web pages were just text with a few images, layout didn't matter. It was all ugly. Now that displays are larger than books, and pages are heavy enough to contain the entire Gutenberg Bible, people are starting to care. Maybe in 5-10 years, with enough server-side computing power and bandwidth, sites will ask for the client's screen size and desired font size, then serve an appropriate PDF.