RE: Are documents loosing the web?

To: "xml-dev@l..." <xml-dev@l...>
From: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>
Date: 01/02/2008 10:07
Subject: RE: Are documents loosing the web?


Le vendredi 01 février 2008 à 08:49 -0600, Len Bullard a écrit :
> Would that it were such an easy choice.  A resource might be a server (see
> Joshua Allen).
>
> We can't gloss past this easily.   The trend has been for some time to have
> less document and more application.  The new languages reflect that clearly.
> I'm on record saying that we are past the time where the page metaphor is an
> innovation focus for the various hypermedia web industries.  Since the HTML
> web has been a throwback (ontogeny replicating phylogeny), forms and
> fat-client GUI development are the logical follow-on.   Rich hypermedia
> clients (Flash, Silverlight) are trendy.   3D, virtual worlds and games are
> where there is innovation but that is a very different client compared to
> HTML.  Some want to wrap HTML around 3D primitives; others want to (are) put
> HTML on the primitives.
>
> The day of the document as the focal point is past.  Why would that be a
> problem?  It isn't going away.  It is just one among many options.

It might be because I am a relatively new comer in the markup world (9
years only) and that I have not yet had the time to explore all its
possibilities but I strongly disagree with that analysis.

Documents have been invented centuries ago and they've proved that they
can be used for pretty much everything and survive pretty much
everything. By contrast, applications usually last months or years at
the best and do not survive major software upgrades.

I do believe that the document paradigm is the best one for the web for
this reason and a number of other ones and I think that fat client
applications should remain a niche in the web rather than the other way
round.

Anyway, Len, I don't think I'll able able to convince you ;) but would
be curious to now what other people think on this list!

Eric

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