3 ms·

The problem is text rendering that exceeds what a VT100 can produce. As soon as you enter that realm, your browser complexity goes exponential.

by bsder 5y ago

dredmorbius 5y ago
Semantic document structure need not have a fixed presentation. Old-school UMIX manpages written in roff were most often displayed on VT-100 terminals, were designed to be compatible with teletypes, and yet could be printed pretty-formatted in variable-width fonts with true italic, bold, and point sizes. You can still see this, e.g.: man -Tps clear | ps2pdf > clear.pdf Open that and you'll find a fully typeset document. Which is kind of the point of semantic markup: it is independent of presentation.
- bsder 5y ago
  Except that you rendered to Postscript--which is a general, stack based programming language (with a bunch of domain specific font manipulation code baked into it as well). Thus demonstrating my point that the moment you go above a VT100 in presentation quality, your complexity goes exponential.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    The point is that the same markup source produces different output endpoints depending on the device and capabilities available. Straight ASCII text, possibly with ANSI sequences, for a terminal. Fully typeset output for a raster display or printer. What you're raising as an objection is actually the entire point of my example.
    - bsder 5y ago
      The complexity of the markup isn't relevant. The complexity of the renderer is. And you are grossly underestimating the complexity of even an ASCII typesetting engine. RUNOFF/nroff/troff/ditroff/groff isn't even easy for a character device like a vt100. The developers of those engines reads like a who's who of computing luminaries. My point as to why rewriting a web browser is hard is that you are developing a "typesetting engine", and developing a typesetting engine is HARD.

3 ms·

The problem is text rendering that exceeds what a VT100 can produce. As soon as you enter that realm, your browser complexity goes exponential.

by bsder 5y ago

The problem is text rendering that exceeds what a VT100 can produce. As soon as you enter that realm, your browser complexity goes exponential.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Semantic document structure need not have a fixed presentation. Old-school UMIX manpages written in roff were most often displayed on VT-100 terminals, were designed to be compatible with teletypes, and yet could be printed pretty-formatted in variable-width fonts with true italic, bold, and point sizes. You can still see this, e.g.: man -Tps clear | ps2pdf > clear.pdf Open that and you'll find a fully typeset document. Which is kind of the point of semantic markup: it is independent of presentation.
- bsder 5y ago
  Except that you rendered to Postscript--which is a general, stack based programming language (with a bunch of domain specific font manipulation code baked into it as well). Thus demonstrating my point that the moment you go above a VT100 in presentation quality, your complexity goes exponential.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    The point is that the same markup source produces different output endpoints depending on the device and capabilities available. Straight ASCII text, possibly with ANSI sequences, for a terminal. Fully typeset output for a raster display or printer. What you're raising as an objection is actually the entire point of my example.
    - bsder 5y ago
      The complexity of the markup isn't relevant. The complexity of the renderer is. And you are grossly underestimating the complexity of even an ASCII typesetting engine. RUNOFF/nroff/troff/ditroff/groff isn't even easy for a character device like a vt100. The developers of those engines reads like a who's who of computing luminaries. My point as to why rewriting a web browser is hard is that you are developing a "typesetting engine", and developing a typesetting engine is HARD.