After HTML: GUI-ML?

[Geoff Berrow]

Because that isn't what it was designed to be.

The original assumption was that styling/rendering would be handled by
the browser, and you'd pick/configure a browser to suit your own
preferred formatting styles.

Unfortunately, people who didn't understand this concept began abusing
the HTML to try to control rendering. And some of the browser authors
exacerbated that by adding styling features to their pre-standardization
dialects of HTML... and then, when HTML *was* standardized, the
standards committee was unwilling/unable to break those establieshed
(bad) practices.

And this is really all you need to say. We also know that Microsoft has
totally destroyed sensible email communication with its Outlook products
and that Betamax was better than VHS.

I have a lot of sympathy for the purist view - I think the aims are
laudable and support them. But I've recently been doing some scripting
for a web design company who are stacked out with work. And the reason
they are stacked out with work is their locked down pixel perfect crisp
design. Bad practice it may be but these guys are delivering what the
customer wants. And unless you can manage to change things through
legislation the customer will continue to decide how web pages should
look and perform.

 

[JDS]

It would be so much easier as the designer of a site if you could be
confident that everyone would see the same view of the page without the
line breaks and table column widths being variable under user control. Let

That is what CSS is for.

 

[JDS]

"why
isn't it?".

Because other things are available and have been worked out for the
*layout* part. Namely CSS.

 

[JDS]

And the reason
they are stacked out with work is their locked down pixel perfect crisp
design.

Who says you can't have both pixel perfect design AND standard-based
document formatting?

 

[Tony]

...I've recently been doing some scripting
for a web design company who are stacked out with work. And the reason
they are stacked out with work is their locked down pixel perfect crisp
design. Bad practice it may be but these guys are delivering what the
customer wants. And unless you can manage to change things through
legislation the customer will continue to decide how web pages should
look and perform.

It is quite ironic: HTML started life as a document markup language, when
the concept of a document was shaped by printing on paper. In a traditional
document you start at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, and then
stop (with occasional asides for footnotes). HTML allowed interactive
documents that could never exist on paper - a printout would bear the same
relationship to the live document as a stuffed animal does to a wild one.
So the concept of a document changed, and HTML, which had been the leader of
change, was dragged behind.

In the traditional document, form and content were relatively easy to
separate. A complex modern "document" such as a page on a large e-commerce
site, makes enormous use of purely visual clues to guide the user. I have
no doubt that even in such a case, there is still a content that can be
separated from the form, and I even believe that it is a good thing for the
designer to try to do it, but it might not be a trivial job.

So it's hardly surprising that the person who pays wants as much control as
possible over form as well as content, and doesn't want to pay for the time
and thought of someone to take away some of their control over the form.

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, Martin Underwood quothed:

Yes. It pisses me off that for some sites, as I move the margins of my
window, the columns of tables grow/shrink

They must be set in percentages then. Were they set in pixels, they'd
(generally) remain fixed.

and lines of text in a table or
paragraphs of text surrounding photographs change their wrapping.

Text-sizing is a different matter. Unfortunately, the prognosis is
gloomy.

 

[Owen Rees]

I wasn't aware that I was being ridiculous. I was asking a question in all
innocence. From the replies, I see that I'm very much in the minority - well
what a surprise: what's new ;-)

As has been pointed out, if you want the kind of layout control you seem
to favour, there is PDF. It is not limited to 'paper' sized pages, you
could generate 'screen' sized pages at your assumed resolution.

If at this point you are thinking "but HTML is more popular than PDF"
then there is a message there.

I believe that you can also get that kind of control with Flash, but I
have no personal experience of it - I have never created any, and my
usual browser does not have the appropriate renderer installed (and that
is my explicit choice).

To all those who think the web ought to have been different I would
point out that there were a lot of alternatives around at the same time.
If it had been what you think it ought to have been perhaps we would now
be using someting else that had whatever it was that made the web so
successful.

 

[axel]

Next wrote in
(e-mail address removed):

I think the bigger issue with HTML and browser design is that it only
supplies *hints* and *suggestions* as to the formatting, rather than making
all browsers display a page with identical formatting, as PDF does. It would
be so much easier as the designer of a site if you could be confident that
everyone would see the same view of the page without the line breaks and
table column widths being variable under user control. Let users have a zoom
control (as for Acrobat Reader) it they need larger print but don't let them
change the font size independent of all other objects on the page; let the
site author retain full control over all other aspects of formatting,
typography etc.

How? Other than embedding typefaces in documents since all computers
do not have the set installed.

And when someone wants to view such pages through lynx or other text
based browser...?

Axel

 

[axel]

in message <[email protected]>, Toby Inkster
('(e-mail address removed)') wrote:

/No-one/ wants PDF. /Ever/. There is never any good reason for using it.

I do. There are many documents I prefer to download as PDF files
and save and read at my leisure. Most of these being technical
documents which correspond to to their printed equivalent.

Or forms which need to be printed and filled out.

But then I could just as well use FTP to receive them except the
web allows suitable indices and means to find these documents.

Axel

 

[if]

I think the bigger issue with HTML and browser design is that it only
supplies *hints* and *suggestions* as to the formatting, rather than
making all browsers display a page with identical formatting, as PDF
does. It would be so much easier as the designer of a site if you
could be confident that everyone would see the same view of the page
without the line breaks and table column widths being variable under
user control.

The problem with this suggestion is that Acrobat is probably one of the
worst methods for displaying documents on-screen ever devised. Its complete
inflexibility has me cursing almost every time I have open a PDF document.


--
______________________________________________________

Distress, n.:
A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
______________________________________________________

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, if quothed:

The problem with this suggestion is that Acrobat is probably one of the
worst methods for displaying documents on-screen ever devised. Its complete
inflexibility has me cursing almost every time I have open a PDF document.

Many people disagree with this but I, for one, concur wholeheartedly.
I'd much rather peruse a document via html (-decent html that is.)

 

[Mark Goodge]

With neither quill nor qualm, if quothed:


Many people disagree with this but I, for one, concur wholeheartedly.
I'd much rather peruse a document via html (-decent html that is.)

PDF has its place. It's particularly good for viewing detailed
technical drawings, plans, etc, as the user can zoom in and out within
the document itself rather than needing to have multiple copies at
different resolutions. It's also good for on screen proofing of a
document that will be published in print, such as the layout of a
magazine. It's also useful for electronically transmitting print
documents from one site to another, such as from a designer to a
printer. What it doesn't do very well is act as an alternative to HTML
for text-based documents that are created primarily for reading
online.

Mark

 

[Toby Inkster]

The fundamental purpose of the World Wide Web is to transmit documents,
not programs, and HTML was a format designed for representing documents.

Actually, TBL has said that when he first conceived the web, he imagined
that most of the information would be available in formats like Postscript
and so forth; with a handful of HTML "index" type documents to help you
find them.

He was pleasantly surprised that HTML caught on as the primary document
format for the Web.

 

[Toby Inkster]

I think the bigger issue with HTML and browser design is that it only
supplies *hints* and *suggestions* as to the formatting[...]

If you want PDF, then *use* PDF.

/No-one/ wants PDF. /Ever/.

Clearly Martin Underwood seems to.

There is never any good reason for using it.

Nonsense.

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, Mark Goodge quothed:

PDF has its place. It's particularly good for viewing detailed
technical drawings, plans, etc, as the user can zoom in and out within
the document itself rather than needing to have multiple copies at
different resolutions. It's also good for on screen proofing of a
document that will be published in print, such as the layout of a
magazine. It's also useful for electronically transmitting print
documents from one site to another, such as from a designer to a
printer. What it doesn't do very well is act as an alternative to HTML
for text-based documents that are created primarily for reading
online.

Perhaps, but overall pdf is a poor alternative to html for text-based
documents that are created to be read period. For "proofs" or something
of that nature, pdf may indeed be useful.

 

[Dylan Parry]

Pondering the eternal question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea?", Simon Brooke
finally proclaimed:

/No-one/ wants PDF. /Ever/. There is never any good reason for using it.

Try giving your documents to a professional printer in something other
than PDF or another Postscript format. It's highly likely that they'll
throw it back at you.

 

[Owen Rees]

Try giving your documents to a professional printer in something other
than PDF or another Postscript format. It's highly likely that they'll
throw it back at you.

I suspect it is more likely that they will offer to fix it up for some
suitable fee.

I suspect it would not be hard to find print shops that would accept
QuarkXpress or Adobe InDesign files - these seem to be popular with the
graphic artists who generate a lot of the artwork that goes to
professional printers.

 

[Dylan Parry]

Pondering the eternal question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea?", Owen Rees
finally proclaimed:

[Giving a print shop files to print]

I suspect it is more likely that they will offer to fix it up for some
suitable fee.

It depends on the printer, but most that I have used will specifically
request some Postscript format, or if they have the appropriate software
they might take a proprietary format like Freehand, QuarkXpress or
Illustrator formats. I haven't come across any yet that will print stuff
from HTML, although I believe that AListApart have published a book in
that exact way?

 

[Ed Mullen]

Pondering the eternal question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea?", Owen Rees
finally proclaimed:

[Giving a print shop files to print]

I suspect it is more likely that they will offer to fix it up for some
suitable fee.

It depends on the printer, but most that I have used will specifically
request some Postscript format, or if they have the appropriate software
they might take a proprietary format like Freehand, QuarkXpress or
Illustrator formats. I haven't come across any yet that will print stuff
from HTML, although I believe that AListApart have published a book in
that exact way?

I've worked with numerous print shops in the past and have had no
problem giving them PDF, QuarkXpress, and even MS Word files.

 

[if]

PDF has its place. It's particularly good for viewing detailed
technical drawings, plans, etc, as the user can zoom in and out within
the document itself rather than needing to have multiple copies at
different resolutions.

Opera can do this with HTML, provided you turn on the hidden interpolation
option (otherwise rescaled images will look like crap). It also has a full
screen mode which really does use the full screen so that you can see as
much of the document as possible.

However for examining images in detail I prefer loading them individually
in Irfanview, which not only lets me zoom in and out in full screen mode
but also sharpen or brighten or resample an image that isn't clear enough.

It's also good for on screen proofing of a

document that will be published in print, such as the layout of a
magazine.

This is the one are where PDF excels, really it's a niche product for
simulating a paper printout. Very useful if you intend the document to be
printed out and know what paper size your customer uses, but an annoyance
otherwise.