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What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

atlasobscura.com

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Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#61

Post by bane »

stan_rogers wrote: post #54
bane wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which of course aren't viewable in a terminal. That's a silly criteria. Books on art, magazines, maps, etc. are all definitely documents and aren't view-able in a terminal. The web was never about interchange of documents, where'd you dream up that fantasy? I'm kind of surprised how dense the ret-con fantasies here are about the web considering this is a pretty technical forum.

How is it even possible to come to that conclusion? The web was about document and hyperlinks and nothing else when it began. There was no scripting. Tables and inline images were later additions. Some of us were actually using and creating content for the web in '93; you can't ret-con us out of the picture.

some of us like me, and the goal was always to get beyond "a document". If you want to just exchange documents, go back to transferring .txt files via ftp.

Hypertext links was simply the first step, but those existed for us for years before the web: gopher, specialty systems, etc.

A desire to move beyond those systems was part of what made the web work, and the first step was moving the web to graphical systems capable of displaying more than formatted fixed-width text on a VT100 terminal like some of the parents above think it was about. That's what gopher was for, that's not what the web was for.

It's both important and unimportant about what the web originally was, because just like I said earlier, the web is about documents as much as cars are about horses. The web has had javascript longer than the web only supported text and links. Think about that.

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#62

Post by bane »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #55
bane wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which of course aren't viewable in a terminal. That's a silly criteria. Books on art, magazines, maps, etc. are all definitely documents and aren't view-able in a terminal. The web was never about interchange of documents, where'd you dream up that fantasy? I'm kind of surprised how dense the ret-con fantasies here are about the web considering this is a pretty technical forum.

Have a look at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_toc.html . It describes a nearly ideal language for technical documentation, and it's fully usable on any web browser ever created. That's how the web worked when authors were competent and not beholden to marketers; before the industry dismantled an outstanding hypertext platform and replaced it with an embarrassingly half-assed application platform.

this doesn't change a single thing I said above

technical documentation includes information that can't be displayed on VT100 terminals and pretending like that's all the web is is clearly and obviously incorrect

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#63

Post by bane »

nkuttler wrote: post #53
bane wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which of course aren't viewable in a terminal. That's a silly criteria. Books on art, magazines, maps, etc. are all definitely documents and aren't view-able in a terminal. The web was never about interchange of documents, where'd you dream up that fantasy? I'm kind of surprised how dense the ret-con fantasies here are about the web considering this is a pretty technical forum.

> The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups. http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Summary.html

so you agree with me, the web is about information, not just vt100 displayable fixed-width text

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#64

Post by DanBC »

bane wrote: post #61
stan_rogers wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it even possible to come to that conclusion? The web was about document and hyperlinks and nothing else when it began. There was no scripting. Tables and inline images were later additions. Some of us were actually using and creating content for the web in '93; you can't ret-con us out of the picture.

some of us like me, and the goal was always to get beyond "a document". If you want to just exchange documents, go back to transferring .txt files via ftp. Hypertext links was simply the first step, but those existed for us for years before the web: gopher, specialty systems, etc. A desire to move beyond those systems was part of what made the web work, and the first step was moving the web to graphical systems capab…

> and the goal was always to get beyond "a document".

No it wasn't. The goal was to get documents that could be read by users no matter what software or computer they were using.

In this thread we're talking about a text document with some images. Javascript contributes nothing to the content. All Javascript is used for in this example is to put a fucking huge ad over the content before the content has loaded, and add some social media widgets. These detract from the content, and make the page harder to use.

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#65

Post by bane »

DanBC wrote: post #64
bane wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some of us like me, and the goal was always to get beyond "a document". If you want to just exchange documents, go back to transferring .txt files via ftp. Hypertext links was simply the first step, but those existed for us for years before the web: gopher, specialty systems, etc. A desire to move beyond those systems was part of what made the web work, and the first step was moving the web to graphical systems capab…

> and the goal was always to get beyond "a document". No it wasn't. The goal was to get documents that could be read by users no matter what software or computer they were using. In this thread we're talking about a text document with some images. Javascript contributes nothing to the content. All Javascript is used for in this example is to put a fucking huge ad over the content before the content has loaded, and ad…

> read by users no matter what software or computer they were using.

again, where is this notion coming from? even if we scope to just text and no images, we already broken on this idea once we move beyond non-latin scripts and unicode.

But that's not the web, the web is not intended for lynx, it's intended for a browser, and all the foibles that browsers bring along with them.

Go rethink your position a bit, because maybe I'm old, but I remember the way the internet worked before the web and after the web, and "displaying documents suitable for a vt100 terminal" was not what the web was ever about.

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#66

Post by nkuttler »

bane wrote: post #63
nkuttler wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups. http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Summary.html

so you agree with me, the web is about information , not just vt100 displayable fixed-width text

No, I disagree about your incorrect statement

> The web was never about interchange of documents

See also http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/, your perception of what is and isn't viewable in a terminal, and what should be, is strange for somebody who claims to know the web's history.

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#67

Post by bane »

nkuttler wrote: post #66
bane wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you agree with me, the web is about information , not just vt100 displayable fixed-width text

No, I disagree about your incorrect statement > The web was never about interchange of documents See also http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/ , your perception of what is and isn't viewable in a terminal, and what should be, is strange for somebody who claims to know the web's history.

Since the web was never intended to be viewed in a terminal, I stand by my position.

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#68

Post by nkuttler »

bane wrote: post #67
nkuttler wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I disagree about your incorrect statement > The web was never about interchange of documents See also http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/ , your perception of what is and isn't viewable in a terminal, and what should be, is strange for somebody who claims to know the web's history.

Since the web was never intended to be viewed in a terminal, I stand by my position.

You realize that the web predates graphical web browsers, right?

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#69

Post by bane »

nkuttler wrote: post #68
bane wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the web was never intended to be viewed in a terminal, I stand by my position.

You realize that the web predates graphical web browsers, right?

Nope, it doesn't. TBL wrote WorldWideWeb along with the rest of the early web stack at CERN, and from the start it included a graphical browser which used the NeXT textclass (a richtext class), which could open anything the NeXT systems could open, which included styles, movies, postscript and sounds.

The Web has literally never been about VT100 text document displays. I'm not sure why this is hard to understand. That was gopher.

I'm really serious. I swear you young people sometimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb

Here, email him yourself and ask away timbl [ a t ] w3.org

Re: What It Was Like to Seek Asylum in Medieval England

#70

Post by wtbob »

bane wrote: post #65
DanBC wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the goal was always to get beyond "a document". No it wasn't. The goal was to get documents that could be read by users no matter what software or computer they were using. In this thread we're talking about a text document with some images. Javascript contributes nothing to the content. All Javascript is used for in this example is to put a fucking huge ad over the content before the content has loaded, and ad…

> read by users no matter what software or computer they were using. again, where is this notion coming from? even if we scope to just text and no images, we already broken on this idea once we move beyond non-latin scripts and unicode. But that's not the web, the web is not intended for lynx, it's intended for a browser, and all the foibles that browsers bring along with them. Go rethink your position a bit, because…

> But that's not the web, the web is not intended for lynx, it's intended for a browser

Lynx is a browser!

Your username is quite appropriate, since you are reason's bane.

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