5 ms·

We're talking about static content here. I'm asking to read a document, not execute a program.

• bane 11y ago
  You've apparently missed the last 10-15 years of web development. The web is no more about static content these days as cars are about horses. If you want static documents, I recommend pdfs?
  • wtbob 11y ago
    > If you want static documents, I recommend pdfs? Which of course aren't viewable in a terminal. The Web is about the interchange of documents, and documents are text.
    • bane 11y ago
      > Which of course aren't viewable in a terminal. That's a silly criteria. Books on art, magazines, maps, etc. are all definitely documents and aren't view-able in a terminal. The web was never about interchange of documents, where'd you dream up that fantasy? I'm kind of surprised how dense the ret-con fantasies here are about the web considering this is a pretty technical forum.
      • nkuttler 11y ago
        > The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups. http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Summary.html http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Summary.html
        • bane 11y ago
          so you agree with me, the web is about information, not just vt100 displayable fixed-width text
          • nkuttler 11y ago
            No, I disagree about your incorrect statement > The web was never about interchange of documents See also http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/ http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/, your perception of what is and isn't viewable in a terminal, and what should be, is strange for somebody who claims to know the web's history.
            • bane 11y ago
              Since the web was never intended to be viewed in a terminal, I stand by my position.
              • nkuttler 11y ago
                You realize that the web predates graphical web browsers, right?
                • bane 11y ago
                  Nope, it doesn't. TBL wrote WorldWideWeb along with the rest of the early web stack at CERN, and from the start it included a graphical browser which used the NeXT textclass (a richtext class), which could open anything the NeXT systems could open, which included styles, movies, postscript and sounds. The Web has literally never been about VT100 text document displays. I'm not sure why this is hard to understand. That was gopher. I'm really serious. I swear you young people sometimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb Here, email him yourself and ask away timbl [ a t ] w3.org
      • stan_rogers 11y ago
        How is it even possible to come to that conclusion? The web was about document and hyperlinks and nothing else when it began. There was no scripting. Tables and inline images were later additions. Some of us were actually using and creating content for the web in '93; you can't ret-con us out of the picture.
        • bane 11y ago
          some of us like me, and the goal was always to get beyond "a document". If you want to just exchange documents, go back to transferring .txt files via ftp. Hypertext links was simply the first step, but those existed for us for years before the web: gopher, specialty systems, etc. A desire to move beyond those systems was part of what made the web work, and the first step was moving the web to graphical systems capable of displaying more than formatted fixed-width text on a VT100 terminal like some of the parents above think it was about. That's what gopher was for, that's not what the web was for. It's both important and unimportant about what the web originally was, because just like I said earlier, the web is about documents as much as cars are about horses. The web has had javascript longer than the web only supported text and links. Think about that.
          • DanBC 11y ago
            > and the goal was always to get beyond "a document". No it wasn't. The goal was to get documents that could be read by users no matter what software or computer they were using. In this thread we're talking about a text document with some images. Javascript contributes nothing to the content. All Javascript is used for in this example is to put a fucking huge ad over the content before the content has loaded, and add some social media widgets. These detract from the content, and make the page harder to use.
            • bane 11y ago
              > read by users no matter what software or computer they were using. again, where is this notion coming from? even if we scope to just text and no images, we already broken on this idea once we move beyond non-latin scripts and unicode. But that's not the web, the web is not intended for lynx, it's intended for a browser, and all the foibles that browsers bring along with them. Go rethink your position a bit, because maybe I'm old, but I remember the way the internet worked before the web and after the web, and "displaying documents suitable for a vt100 terminal" was not what the web was ever about.
      • prodigal_erik 11y ago
        Have a look at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_toc.html http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_toc.html. It describes a nearly ideal language for technical documentation, and it's fully usable on any web browser ever created. That's how the web worked when authors were competent and not beholden to marketers; before the industry dismantled an outstanding hypertext platform and replaced it with an embarrassingly half-assed application platform.
        • bane 11y ago
          this doesn't change a single thing I said above technical documentation includes information that can't be displayed on VT100 terminals and pretending like that's all the web is is clearly and obviously incorrect