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Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#51

Post by [deleted] »

Touche wrote: post #37
recursivedoubts wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but htmx is small (~1.7K loc[1]), written mostly by one guy part time and, while not perfect, advances HTML significantly as a hypermedia. That something like this hasn't been discussed in a significant, public manner by the w3c in over a decade[2] indicates to me there is either a lack of understanding or of interest in advancing HTML as a hypermedia. I readily admit I may be missing something. [1] - https://g…

Advancing HTML is indeed something that the w3c members aren't super interested in. There are a few reasons for this: 1) Changes to HTML can create security issues, especially if it results in a change to the HTML parser. You have to consider that non-browser use cases still need to be able to parse HTML correctly. Since we opted to make HTML versionless with it became harder to do. 2) Big changes are harder to get c…

[deleted]

Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#52

Post by sergeykish »

bjoli wrote: post #33

I think there is a rather big divide between people like me who thinks the web should be "content-only" and people who see it as an application platform. Most of what I do on the web resolves around reading things, not interacting in any meaningful way. Most of the web tries it's best to ruin that experience. Most of what I do online would be better served by gopher. I understand I am a part of a minuscule minority,…

But what is the difference once you disable JS and CSS? And reader mode? I find it great that I can progressively enable features.

Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#53

Post by MaxBarraclough »

enumjorge wrote: post #47
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article offers a few reasons but they strike me as weak sauce. > persuading Web developers to use it is where the real problem lies So what? There are various alternative markup formats, like Gemini, Gopher, Finger, Troff (used for Unix man pages), and perhaps we'd also count Markdown, and even RTF. Not every project aims for world domination. Websites interested in being lightweight, already can. HackerNews, Pin…

I don’t understand your first point. As you state yourself, there’s already alternative formats for minimal websites. Current HTML can already do simple, content-only documents. But developers aren’t using those approaches in significant numbers. The existence of these options is not enough to solve the problem otherwise it’d be considered solved. You still need to convince devs to create content for it, which goes b…

I'll rephrase what I think you're saying, as I think it's a valid point:

Given that we already have the ability to make lightweight HTML-based web-pages, and we also already have a variety of lightweight alternative markup languages to choose from, what's the point of picking one particular subset of HTML and giving it a brand-name? The real goal should be to encourage web developers to make better, more lightweight websites, and/or to encourage use of lightweight alternative markup technologies (to better support very simple browser solutions).

Again I think it's a fair point.

Another related point: the Gemini project seems to be capable of automatic conversion to HTML. Any such project should make this ability a priority. If you then go ahead and use that, you get an HTML subset 'for free', as the generated HTML files will be lightweight and use few HTML features.

We do this today with Markdown. HackerNews won't let me generate a tag, but we're allowed tags.

Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#54

Post by enumjorge »

chacha2 wrote: post #44
jasonlotito wrote: post #30

Developers can already do this. They can just use HTML. Plain old HTML. They don't have to use JavaScript. They don't have to use CSS. They can just use plain boring HTML. That they can do this now makes me ask the question: what problem are we solving? If people aren't using the existing solution enough, and the existing solution solves the "issues" of CSS and JavaScript being used, then what is the problem?

The global spynet, the waste of computing devices that need to be constantly upgraded to handle the new minimum requirements of the web and the degrading accessibility of many websites.

Yes those are problems, but we already have a technical solution to address that, plain HTML. But content providers aren’t using that. They aren’t incentivized to do so. Forking web technologies attempts to solve the already-solved technical problem without addressing the real problem which is how do you incentivize people to create content without all the bloat?

Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#55

Post by earthboundkid »

wegs wrote: post #23

From my perspective, the reason to have a language for static documents is parsability. With HTML5+CSS+JS, there are few organizations at the scale which can sustain making something like a web browser, a general-purpose web crawler, a11y tools, or similar. Could it be a common language? Perhaps. I liked HTML2. I hated basically everything which went into HTML3 and HTML4. HTML5 has made a lot of good progress on roll…

I'm not sure why you think the web is less parseable now. HTML5 is well described and it's easy to get a compliant HTML5 parser for whatever language. Back in the day, people were just doing regex.

There's a separate issue that a lot of stuff requires JS, but the JS mostly just calls JSON endpoints, so that's easy to scrape. The tricky thing is scraping ASPX sites that jump through a bunch of hoops instead of having a simple backend API.

Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#56

Post by WorldMaker »

Touche wrote: post #37
recursivedoubts wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but htmx is small (~1.7K loc[1]), written mostly by one guy part time and, while not perfect, advances HTML significantly as a hypermedia. That something like this hasn't been discussed in a significant, public manner by the w3c in over a decade[2] indicates to me there is either a lack of understanding or of interest in advancing HTML as a hypermedia. I readily admit I may be missing something. [1] - https://g…

Advancing HTML is indeed something that the w3c members aren't super interested in. There are a few reasons for this: 1) Changes to HTML can create security issues, especially if it results in a change to the HTML parser. You have to consider that non-browser use cases still need to be able to parse HTML correctly. Since we opted to make HTML versionless with it became harder to do. 2) Big changes are harder to get c…

4) The W3C HTML spec is now mostly just a placeholder that says "Whatever WHATWG thinks is best" and it is almost but not quite true that WHATWG's Living Spec is increasingly "Whatever works in Chromium/Chrome"

Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#57

Post by sergeykish »

chacha2 wrote: post #44
jasonlotito wrote: post #30

Developers can already do this. They can just use HTML. Plain old HTML. They don't have to use JavaScript. They don't have to use CSS. They can just use plain boring HTML. That they can do this now makes me ask the question: what problem are we solving? If people aren't using the existing solution enough, and the existing solution solves the "issues" of CSS and JavaScript being used, then what is the problem?

The global spynet, the waste of computing devices that need to be constantly upgraded to handle the new minimum requirements of the web and the degrading accessibility of many websites.

Technology is here, each modern browser can be restricted to HTML only per page by user. If it is not enough use NetSurf, Dillo, a bunch of console browsers.

Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#58

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

sergeykish wrote: post #50
ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #43

I firmly believe truly plain HTML (sans even CSS) would be used more if browsers didn't seem to go out of their ways to make default pages ugly. Every element, down to H6, should be legible by default (even without the proprietary-turned-CSS viewport meta tag). Sure, nothing is guaranteed about style, but that doesn't mean, for instance, that tables can't be styled by default and must instead look like a collection o…

I imagine change in user.css would break existing pages. Individual user can make such decision but browser care about those who don't. Have you updated yours? It should start somewhere...

I don’t see how making text legible and adding some style to tables would break existing unstyled pages.

With regard to your second point, I’m not talking about user style sheets, but about the prospect of writing unstyled HTML. If I ever get to post anything on my personal website I will walk the walk and use plain HTML, yes, but I doubt this will have any meaningful impact!

Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#59

Post by sergeykish »

ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #58
sergeykish wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine change in user.css would break existing pages. Individual user can make such decision but browser care about those who don't. Have you updated yours? It should start somewhere...

I don’t see how making text legible and adding some style to tables would break existing unstyled pages. With regard to your second point, I’m not talking about user style sheets, but about the prospect of writing unstyled HTML. If I ever get to post anything on my personal website I will walk the walk and use plain HTML, yes, but I doubt this will have any meaningful impact!

It would make them look different, maybe conflicting with other applied styles. Browsers still supports quirks mode. It is only possible to change defaults if no content exists - XHTML has no quirks mode.

I'm trying to explore this direction, http://sergeykish.com/live-pages - just a few rules. Publish it, this page is from 2015, finally published. I believe the main obstacle is authoring and I want to resolve it. Write in markdown, run generator, apply themes, explore in devtools, host it - too much hassle, too professional.

We can write right on the page. PUT that page on server as it is. GET it back. Sync with static storage. Write own tools. That's simplicity, it is empowering.

Re: Forking HTML into a static language doesn't make sense

#60

Post by zokier »

WorldMaker wrote: post #56
Touche wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advancing HTML is indeed something that the w3c members aren't super interested in. There are a few reasons for this: 1) Changes to HTML can create security issues, especially if it results in a change to the HTML parser. You have to consider that non-browser use cases still need to be able to parse HTML correctly. Since we opted to make HTML versionless with it became harder to do. 2) Big changes are harder to get c…

4) The W3C HTML spec is now mostly just a placeholder that says "Whatever WHATWG thinks is best" and it is almost but not quite true that WHATWG's Living Spec is increasingly "Whatever works in Chromium/Chrome"

Well XHTML 2.0 was such a roaring success that I'm sure they'll be super stoked to take on another project to improve HTML as hypertext without the baggage of browser backing and buyin.
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