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The article offers a few reasons but they strike me as weak sauce. > persuading Web developers to use it is where the real problem lies So what? There are var

The article offers a few reasons but they strike me as weak sauce. > persuading Web developers to use it is where the real problem lies So what? There are various alternative markup formats, like Gemini, Gopher, Finger, Troff (used for Unix man pages), and perhaps we'd also count Markdown, and even RTF. Not every project aims for world domination. Websites interested in being lightweight, already can. HackerNews, Pinboard, and SourceHut, all manage it. > getting your entire constituency to agree on a specific list of allowed features is going to be very difficult Maybe so, but it doesn't sound insurmountable. This sounds no more challenging than any other committee-driven process. > Video? Animated GIFs? CSS :hover? CSS media queries? Different people will give different answers to these questions. My answer is no on all counts, for what it's worth. None of those things belong in a simple minimal document format. > we could build a much more efficient browser (or browser mode) for that subset. As a former Mozilla distinguished engineer, I'm skeptical. It's obvious that the system requirements for such a browser would be far lower than those of Firefox. We already have a project much like this in Castor. [0] I figure that's the point here. No-one is suggesting that Firefox, running on a modern desktop machine, struggles to render basic HTML. It's still heavyweight software though. The idea of running Firefox on an Arduino, for example, is laughable. [0] https://sr.ht/~julienxx/Castor/ https://sr.ht/~julienxx/Castor/ edit Forgot to mention, this question of subsetting HTML, vs using an alternative like Gemini in the Castor browser, cropped up in recent discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23165029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23165029 edit 2 See also Point 2.5, Why not just use a subset of HTTP and HTML?, at https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.html https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.html

enumjorge 6y ago
I don’t understand your first point. As you state yourself, there’s already alternative formats for minimal websites. Current HTML can already do simple, content-only documents. But developers aren’t using those approaches in significant numbers. The existence of these options is not enough to solve the problem otherwise it’d be considered solved. You still need to convince devs to create content for it, which goes back to the authors original point.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I'll rephrase what I think you're saying, as I think it's a valid point: Given that we already have the ability to make lightweight HTML-based web-pages, and we also already have a variety of lightweight alternative markup languages to choose from, what's the point of picking one particular subset of HTML and giving it a brand-name? The real goal should be to encourage web developers to make better, more lightweight websites, and/or to encourage use of lightweight alternative markup technologies (to better support very simple browser solutions). Again I think it's a fair point. Another related point: the Gemini project seems to be capable of automatic conversion to HTML. Any such project should make this ability a priority. If you then go ahead and use that, you get an HTML subset 'for free', as the generated HTML files will be lightweight and use few HTML features. We do this today with Markdown. HackerNews won't let me generate a <blink> tag, but we're allowed <i> tags.

enumjorge 6y ago

I don’t understand your first point. As you state yourself, there’s already alternative formats for minimal websites. Current HTML can already do simple, content-only documents. But developers aren’t using those approaches in significant numbers. The existence of these options is not enough to solve the problem otherwise it’d be considered solved. You still need to convince devs to create content for it, which goes back to the authors original point.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I'll rephrase what I think you're saying, as I think it's a valid point: Given that we already have the ability to make lightweight HTML-based web-pages, and we also already have a variety of lightweight alternative markup languages to choose from, what's the point of picking one particular subset of HTML and giving it a brand-name? The real goal should be to encourage web developers to make better, more lightweight websites, and/or to encourage use of lightweight alternative markup technologies (to better support very simple browser solutions). Again I think it's a fair point. Another related point: the Gemini project seems to be capable of automatic conversion to HTML. Any such project should make this ability a priority. If you then go ahead and use that, you get an HTML subset 'for free', as the generated HTML files will be lightweight and use few HTML features. We do this today with Markdown. HackerNews won't let me generate a <blink> tag, but we're allowed <i> tags.