RE: WARNING! NEW KATE PAGE!

[cbullard@HiWAAY.net (Len Bullard)]

WARNING!!! RANT FOLLOWS!!!

This isn't aimed at Markku who 
appears to be making earnest rebuttal.  
But before we all start stripping neat 
things off of our Kate pages to save 
ourselves from being evicted from the
LemmingHerd:

1.  It's pretty easy to use the mailto 
to make suggestions to an HTML page author.  
But if all you have to say is, "it sucks", well,
that's just more ASCII to the bit bucket.

2.  I use frames, applets and VRML extensions.
When things get stable, I'll script inside
the language to get more interactive behaviors.
I'll use any tool I can lay my sweaty hands on 
to get attention for Kate's work.  No apologies.
If someone can't view it, that's not my problem.
www.netscape.com gives away a few zillion
browsers a day.  They have about 70 percent of 
the market, and in my book, that's a big enough 
audience and selective breeding at its best.

[Markku Kolkka]

>When somebody makes a WWW page that is useless to anyone
>who doesn't use one particular brand of browser, isn't he 
>"booing" at people who don't use his favorite software? 

IMO, no.  The Internet is plumbing.  The WWW is a faucet 
over the pipes.  Netscape is a Delta Faucet.
Should one use a basin then insult the owner 
because they choose to use a washerless faucet?    

Anyone out there want to curse in Kate's face for using 
synthesizers that encode frequencies not reproducible on 
$19 cassette players?  She might get "medieval on your 
hiney" PDQ.

David Benson uses plugins, specifically, Shockwave.  
One cannot view his "concerts" without it.  Anyone 
who uses database calls is screwing up the search 
engines at Yahoo.  Shall we pursue these folks into 
yon windmill and burn it down around them?  

>The whole idea of WWW is to make information available to
>anyone, independently of what hardware or software they use.

Nice position.  I agree with it. But it isn't viable.  
Take that Web server (software) and browser (software)
off your WinTel (hardware) and see if it still reads HTML.
ASCII you can always get unless you happen to be
stuck with some strange system using EBCDIC.  The point
is, no matter how you think about HTML, you have very
little control over what a framework handler does with
it.  That's the decision of the handler programmer
and the company that makes the framework.  If they can't
compete, they can't give away those browsers.  If
they are reduced to the lowest common denominator,
they can't compete.  Every new version of the language
tries to accommodate the most successful extensions.
That is a good plan, and it works.

The WWW makes is possible for more people in more places to
get more information.  But universally?  Can't be done.
It's like asking all of you to line up arm in arm
and march in a straight line, horizontally, across the
Alps without breaking ranks, and shooting those who do.
Kind of a boring party, don't ya think except for those
moments of stark terror when the linePolice show up
to cull the herd?

Which of the non ISO Latin character sets do you think
an HTML display engine must support?  How many languages
are not available because HTML browsers don't support their
glyphs?  Whose culture should vanish from history because of our 
Western-centric HTML, or the American English-mostly Internet?

That Gaelic crap has just got to stop, Kate! 
It ain't "of the body".  Dang! Where is Donald
Sutherland when we need him?

>Frames aren't part of any released version of 
>HTML specification. 

No, they are part of the so-called Netscape Mozilla DTD.  
So? They parse.  That's how SGML is used.  As long
as you are sharp enough to put the right <!DOCTYPE in the
instance, a clever browser can figure out what to do.

You are using clever browsers right?  You are respecting
the rules of the parent standard ISO 8879, right?  No?  

No More Tears.

Go to the W3C page and look up SGML activities.  Note
Tim BLs commment about the information that is lost
because of downtranslations to HTML.  Read what he
suggests be done about it.  Help out if you can.
But whatever, understand that some changes are
coming to the WWW because people need to do things
with it that can't be done with HTML without making
HTML so complicated that most of it's current users will
fall off the information bandwagon like melons on a 
bumpy infoHiwaay.  Can you say, Turing complete?

>Besides,it's quite possible to make pages to support both 
>standard-compliant and "enhanced" browsers.

True.  I did that on the KateWorlds until the maintenance
pushed it into a heavy workload.  I label the VRML
worlds for Netscape/Live3D, and IMO, that's fair enough.
Then there are those ISP max limits on server space.  

Something has to give and since I make the worlds, 
I choose the VRML animation for interest and frames
for the ability to use controls to prevent needless reloads 
through a VRML TOC.  A big advantage of frames is the 
capability to use controls for the non-HTML notations.
Otherwise, the notation handler loads, like it or not, or
you get a sweet alt kiss off from the applet tag handler.  

The problem is actually naming the frame page "index.htm"
which the server gives one by default if no filename
is put at the end of the URL. Jon could, if he wished, 
put up a different index.htm that uses no extensions, 
and link it to the frame index.  That's his choice.

anyway... back to kate.  So the Common Ground cut is
good?  Salivate! Salivate!

len bullard

http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/