Re: HTML - presentation vs structure -- WEB400

Peter,
 
Something that may interest you about history, origins and HTML... if
memory serves,
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is an off-shoot of IBM's GML
(Generalized Markup Language) that was invented LONG before there were
PCs doing web pages.  GML was created to be a mechanism of generating
interpretive "code" for making publications especially those that would
be printed by IBM laser printers.  The old 3800 comes to mind which
printed continuous sheets at MANY thousands of lines per minute (kinda
like a mini version of how a newspaper is printed except using dynamic
content creation, not static plates).
 
In fact, MANY of the HTML codes and how you code HTML is almost a
direct copy of how we used to make internal and external documents (all
IBM manuals and Redbooks) before the days of Word, WordPerfect, Lotus
Notes, web pages, etc.  Of course we were using XEDIT and other editors
in the VM or MVS operating systems on mainframes and electronically
sending the text file to one of the IBM printers that interpreted the
GML tags and generated an image  on the printer drum.   So, from this
perspective, as GML was about presentation, I'd say HTML is also. 
 
FWIW,
 
Dave Odom
Arizona

"Peter Dow (ML)" <maillist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 2/8/2007 15:03 >>>

Hi Joe,

My wife is taking a course on XHTML and in the text book, they tell the

history of HTML and CSS.  According to that book, HTML was supposed to

be about structure, not presentation.  Then people started using it and

wanting to change the presentation stuff, so browser writers started 
adding tags for that all over the place.  It started getting out of
hand 
and that's when w3c was started, in order to get things back on track,

where HTML is presentation, and this new-fangled CSS would handle the 
presentation part.  I think that was around HTML 3.02 and 4.01.

I can see a lot of room for argument about what's structure and what's

presentation, but when you said "HTML is presentation level..." I 
thought I'd jump in and give everyone something to start wrangling
about 
tomorrow (tomorrow is Friday, isn't it?).

*Peter Dow* /
Dow Software Services, Inc.
909 793-9050
pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> /

Joe Pluta wrote:

From: Alfredo Delgado

When you use tables for content layout you end up breaking up
information by what it'll look like on the screen instead of how it
logically goes together.


But how else should it logically go together other than how it looks

on the

screen?  HTML is presentation level, not transmission level.  If you

want to

send the data to the client completely presentation-agnostic, the

best thing

would be to send it as pure XML and then use XSLT to transform it on

the

fly.

XHTML still has table tags because they're what
should be used for tabulated data. You can apply styles to these

tags

just like any other.


But if you think about it, a typical business application is all

about

tabular data.  A customer information screen is a table of field

names and

values.  An order history screen is a table showing columns of data

from

orders.

With a few exceptions, business data is tabular in nature.

Joe