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> The web should have been based on Display PostScript instead of HTML. For all that I dislike HTML tag soup, the language does a lot of things right. It's ref

> The web should have been based on Display PostScript instead of HTML. For all that I dislike HTML tag soup, the language does a lot of things right. It's reflowable, it can be rendered at any resolution (even a text terminal, see Lynx), it's flexible enough to support any document structure, and it can be picked up quickly by any 12-year-old with a text editor and no previous programming experience (and that's how we got ourselves the quirky and fun 90s Internet). You'd be hard pressed to find another document markup language that can do the same. TeX, maybe? Certainly not a graphics language like PostScript.

runnerup 4y ago
I wish the modern web was usably renderable by Lynx. Obviously there are still great sites which are, like HN and many tech blogs. But AFAIK none of the major platforms are particularly usable on Lynx. I have fond memories of using Lynx and third party CLI messaging apps for AIM, IRC, etc when installing Gentoo on my iMac in 2004 for my first foray into linux. X needed modifications to the Gentoo bootloader to run on my hardware so it took a month or so of assistance from people[0] on #gentoo IRC before I had GUI running. But my digital life was entirely accessible with the CLI apps and 'screen' for multitasking. Living and breathing CLI for that long really went a long way to helping me learn Linux (as well as suffering Gentoo's propensity to require make configure for everything and its excellent guides to choosing between innumerable compile-time customizations of each package). Nowadays that's very hard to do as iChat's XMPP has been replaced by iMessage's very closed system, IRC certainly isn't dead but Discord has taken front-and-center for many communities of high-interest, and websites are essentially impossible to navigate in CLI. It's not necessarily a problem with HTML, but it is a "problem" with so much being moved to React / SPA architecture. A niche problem, to be sure. But it makes me sad that other young netizens can't have the same opportunities that I did. 0: Shoutout to Joseph Jezak ( https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/2006 https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/2006 , https://blogs.gentoo.org/josejx/ https://blogs.gentoo.org/josejx/ ) -- your selfless help that summer sincerely changed my life.

runnerup 4y ago

I wish the modern web was usably renderable by Lynx. Obviously there are still great sites which are, like HN and many tech blogs. But AFAIK none of the major platforms are particularly usable on Lynx. I have fond memories of using Lynx and third party CLI messaging apps for AIM, IRC, etc when installing Gentoo on my iMac in 2004 for my first foray into linux. X needed modifications to the Gentoo bootloader to run on my hardware so it took a month or so of assistance from people[0] on #gentoo IRC before I had GUI running. But my digital life was entirely accessible with the CLI apps and 'screen' for multitasking. Living and breathing CLI for that long really went a long way to helping me learn Linux (as well as suffering Gentoo's propensity to require make configure for everything and its excellent guides to choosing between innumerable compile-time customizations of each package). Nowadays that's very hard to do as iChat's XMPP has been replaced by iMessage's very closed system, IRC certainly isn't dead but Discord has taken front-and-center for many communities of high-interest, and websites are essentially impossible to navigate in CLI. It's not necessarily a problem with HTML, but it is a "problem" with so much being moved to React / SPA architecture. A niche problem, to be sure. But it makes me sad that other young netizens can't have the same opportunities that I did. 0: Shoutout to Joseph Jezak ( https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/2006 https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/2006 , https://blogs.gentoo.org/josejx/ https://blogs.gentoo.org/josejx/ ) -- your selfless help that summer sincerely changed my life.