I think the idea comes directly from timbl himself. Maybe he even got it from one of it the webs predecessors, like project Xanadu maybe. Certainly older than C

I think the idea comes directly from timbl himself. Maybe he even got it from one of it the webs predecessors, like project Xanadu maybe. Certainly older than CSS Zen Garden (which is a brilliant project) and even older than CSS (which was the one of at least two style sheet languages that won). The original idea was that the server provides the content and the consumer (browser) is responsible for presentation. In this thinking the separation of content and presentation makes total sense and the delineation is just a matter of practicality. If the same party provides content and the presentation I find the distinction much harder to justify. Especially since there is no hard boundary (server pure content, consumer pure style) people will draw the line where it is convenient for them. What you inevitably will end up with is crossovers like in Tailwind.