HTML 4.0 Approved

[Roy Tennant]

One of my personality flaws is that I'm practical to a fault. So when I
look at HTML 4.0 I see a specification doomed to failure. 4.0 is not an
incremental enhancement from 3.2, as 3.2 was for 2.0, but rather a
complete rewrite from the ground up. For the mass of Web authors out
there, 4.0 represents a learning cliff. I strongly doubt that most will
choose to scale that cliff, particularly when something much better lurks
in the wings -- XML. 

Until someone can convince me otherwise, I will stay safe and warm in the
arms of 3.2 until enough software out there supports XML. I doubt I will
ever implement 4.0. But as we know by now, you should ask me again in six
months. I may be singing an entirely different tune.
Roy Tennant

On Thu, 18 Dec 1997, Thomas Dowling wrote:

> The World Wide Web Consortium announced today (12/18) that it has issued
> HTML 4.0 as a W3C Recommendation.  HTML 4.0 is actually issued in 3 flavors:
> strict, transitional, and frameset (yes, framesets can actually now be
> created with valid HTML).  W3C also introduced an HTML validation service.
> 
> To the extent that the W3C is a standards body, their Recommendations are
> their standards documents.  IOW, HTML 4.0 is now the third "official"
> version of HTML, after 2.0 and 3.2.  Notable features include significant
> extensions to tables, support for frames and scripts, and reliance on
> stylesheets (the strict flavor appears to allow no presentational elements
> or attributes at all except for <B> and <I>).  The default character set is
> now ISO 10646 (essentially Unicode) instead of ISO Latin1.
> 
> Press release of the announcement: http://www.w3.org/Press/HTML4-REC
> HTML 4.0 specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/
> W3C HTML Validator: http://validator.w3.org/
> DTDs and related texts:
>   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd (Strict DTD)
>   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd (Loose DTD)
>   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/frameset.dtd (Frameset DTD)
>   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/HTMLlat1.ent (Latin-1 entities)
>   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/HTMLsymbol.ent (Symbol entities)
>   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/HTMLspecial.ent (Special entities)
> Changes between version 3.2 and 4.0:
>   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/changes.html
> Microsoft's promise to support HTML 4.0 (hold them to it--right
>   after they complete work on HTML 2.0):
>   http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/press/1997/Jul97/W3Chtmpr.htm
> Netscape's promise to support HTML 4.0:
>   Uhh, guys?  "Search found 0 documents"?  They haven't
>   even addressed the subject?  The draft has been out
>   for almost half a year.
> 
> Random thoughts on the subject (and I'll warn you that I'm running a mild
> fever):  I had the, er, "opportunity" today to revise a document which my
> boss had imported from HTML into Word 97 and then saved back into something
> with a .htm file extension.  It was a rat's nest of mis-nested tags,
> extraneous paragraphs, and generally chaotic markup.  I like what I've come
> to know about HTML 4.0, but it has this drawback: it is a more complex
> language than its predecessors.  I think it's close to a point where very
> few people will want to craft it by hand, even if they know how, and that
> means that its success relies increasingly on accurate tools.  I find it
> discouraging that the most heavily used HTML editors out there create such
> lousy HTML.  Wasn't one of Microsoft's early strengths their programming
> tools?  Don't they know how to make editors nest things in proper order?  If
> their premiere word processor can't come close to writing HTML 3.2, can I
> rely on any of their products to write HTML 4.0?
> 
> I feel like the power and flexibility of HTML 4.0 presents us, as a
> community of Web developers, with a challenge, but I'm having a hard time
> articulating to myself exactly what that challenge is.  I don't particularly
> like the way the Web is being steered and I'm suspicious of whose hands are
> on the rudder.  I can imagine a powerful suite of standards creating a rich
> environment for creating and distributing online information, but I also see
> around me a grubby power grab that consists of capitalizing on proprietary
> hacks, and the result increasingly strikes me as a corpus of sales brochures
> and product catalogs, a World Wide Vertical File.
> 
> I find myself wondering if HTML 4.0 isn't one of the final chances to switch
> to that other Web, and I'm bothered both my Microsoft's promise of
> support--on which they clearly haven't carried through--and Netscape's lack
> of a promise.  I'm bothered that I can already go to a bookstore and find
> books claiming to cover HTML 4.0 that obviously do about as well as the ones
> still claiming to cover HTML 3.0 (my "Hmm, there's an index entry for
> <CENTER> but not for <COLGROUP> or <Q>" test).
> 
> In short, I wonder if this new tool will ever be put to use, or if a net
> full of HTML-hacks-as-bad-page-layout Web authors can be coaxed into trying
> things a new way.
> 
> 
> Thomas Dowling
> OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
> tdowling at ohiolink.edu
> 
> 
> 
>