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HTML: A technological detour?

A few friends of mine and I are having an argument, and I thought I’d propose it to the Forum.

A technological detour is when technology goes down a certain path, and suddenly makes a drastic switch to another path that has nothing to do with the old one.

An example would be vacuum tubes. They existed for a long time, until the advent of transistors, which had absolutely nothing to do with vacuum tubes.

Another would be cassette tapes, which were supplanted by CDs, which were nothing like cassettes.

The argument we’re having is this: That HTML was nothing more than a technological detour, and that XML (including XHTML) has nothing to do with the old HTML.

Do you guys think this is true?

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39 Comments(s)

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@BigMoosieNov 17.2005 — I strongly disagree.
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@Stephen_PhilbinNov 17.2005 — The argument we're having is this: That HTML was nothing more than a technological detour, and that XML (including XHTML) has nothing to do with the old HTML.

Do you guys think this is true?[/QUOTE]


Yes.

HTML and XML are both born of SGML, and they are both markup languages, but that's where it stops. They are very different and NOT compatible. For a fine example of how incompatible they are, have a look at a testbed of mine: http://www.dootdootdoodydoodydootdoodoooo.com/ in IE and a web browser. I've disabled parts of the content negotiation for a little while so you can see. In IE, you'll get perfectly valid XHTML served as text/html, yet still you'll get nothing but a blue screen. Yet if you veiw the same thing in a web browser you'll get XHTML served as application/xml+xhtml and the page (if you can call it that) will be there for all to see.

Consider them the same at your own cost.
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@UltimaterNov 17.2005 — I'd stick with HTML, I'm sure Charles is around somewhere and suports me retroactively. You cannot win against Charles in discussions concerning standards so we might as well just settle the argument in favor of Charles. ?

No offense Charles, it's just I recall you supporting this idea in the past.
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@rhsundergroundNov 17.2005 — moved to general, due to presence of a logical topic.
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@CharlesNov 17.2005 — I wouldn't say that transistors were any kind of radical shift from vacuum tubes. They're remarkably similar in the way that they work. You have three prongs, the voltage across the one regulates the voltage moving between the other two. Sure, the chemistry and physics inside is different but they're basically the same thing. One's bigger and more expensive than the other, but then tubes actually do a better job of amplifying a signal.

Lobotomies, now there's a technological detour.

And be careful trying to compare HTML to XML. HTML is to SGML what XHTML is to XML. From that it follows that:

[font=monospace]HTML x XML = XHTML x SGML[/font]

The implications of that are Earth shattering, but I digress. SGML is the grammar and HTML provides the vocabulary. HTML isn't some subsequent technology to SGML it is an application of it. In the same way, XML is the grammar and XHTML provides the vocabulary. Now, XML is clearly and admittedly based upon SGML so we can't say that SGML is a detour. XML is another stage of development. An we observe that HTML and XHTML each provide exactly the same grammar. The one is derived from the other. It serves a different purpose, but it is derived from it nonetheless.
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 17.2005 — Consider them the same at your own cost.[/QUOTE]

So what you're saying here is that HTML and XHTML are completely unrelated?

BTW, part of this technological detour argument was that HTML was, in retrospect, a mistake.
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@NogDogNov 18.2005 — For what it's worth, tubes are making a strong comeback in the audiophile world. Everything else being equal, they tend to be more linear than transistors, plus when either is driven to distortion, the harmonics that tubes tend to distort in are less irritating than those that transistors distort in.

Yes, I own a tubed amp for my music system. In fact, I'm such an anachronism that I often listen to vinyl records throuh it.

No, I have no opinion on the subject of this thread. Sorry for the diversion.

?
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@Jeff_MottNov 18.2005 — Firstly, I think the original posted definition of a technological detour is wrong. A detour (as it is more commonly referred to when traveling) is when you have to take a different path to get to the same place. So the two paths do have at least one thing in common: the destination.

Given that, transistors might be considered a detour of vacuum tubes. As Charles' said, it achieves the same result with different technology. (Though, a detour still doesn't seem to be the proper analogy for the transistor. More like a major highway that takes you to the same place as the vacuum tube, which would be a curvy backroad. But I guess bad analogies happen when we suddenly try to invent a new term.)

HTML and XHTML. I would call this a fork rather than a detour. The XHTML "road" can take you much further, but there are obstacles in getting many cars onto this path.
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@ray326Nov 18.2005 — BTW, part of this technological detour argument was that HTML was, in retrospect, a mistake.[/QUOTE]Yes and that's just silly. A "mistake" can only be made when a choice is involved and HTML existed as the sole markup language for the web for several years before XML came on the scene. That's like saying the English settlers made a mistake in retrospect of using ships to travel to America because jet airliners are so much quicker.
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 18.2005 — Actually, Jeff, it's the other way around: Vacuum tubes were a detour of transistors.

Basically, what the question my friends and I are snarling and snapping over is this: Are HTML and XHTML at all related, beyond being markup languages, or are they utterly alien to each other?
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@NogDogNov 18.2005 — Vacuum tubes still do a great job of sound amplification, using well-proven technology. Transitors are much more useful and practical than tubes for building complex circuits such as those used in computers. I see no reason to stop using one or the other, or claim that either is better, but simply select the best tool for the specific need.

HTML does a fine job of presenting documents on the web, using well-proven technology. XML/XHTML is more useful for creating more complex data interchange applications. I see no reason to stop using one or the other, or claim that either is better, but simply select the best tool for the specific need.
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@KravvitzNov 18.2005 — Very well said, NogDog. ?


I would say that they are related since XHTML is HTML rewritten as an application of XML.
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@Stephen_PhilbinNov 18.2005 — Vacuum tubes still do a great job of sound amplification, using well-proven technology. Transitors are much more useful and practical than tubes for building complex circuits such as those used in computers. I see no reason to stop using one or the other, or claim that either is better, but simply select the best tool for the specific need.

HTML does a fine job of presenting documents on the web, using well-proven technology. XML/XHTML is more useful for creating more complex data interchange applications. I see no reason to stop using one or the other, or claim that either is better, but simply select the best tool for the specific need.[/QUOTE]


Agreed. I see mistaking HTML for being the same as XHTML as like mistaking a cat for being the same as a dog. They have a lot in common: similair physical arrangement, fur, four legs, good for company and so on, but they aren't even the same species.
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@DaiWelshNov 18.2005 — I think using html and xhtml as examples of technology is where the first problem lies. As Charles said, vacuum tubes and transistors could be seen as very similar in [B]functional[/B] terms but are very different in the technological means by which they achieve that fucntion, hence a technological detour makes sense as a concept - two totally different technological routes to the same functionality, one becomes a dead end and the other becomes the basis for future advance.

When you are operating in a virtual world, which is the appropriate analogy for the physics/chemistry side of the technological world?

Is it a case that function is king in computing and therefore functional equivalence is all that matters?

Or are rules & syntax the equivalent of physical/chemical mechanism? Or delivery method? Or...?

Alternatively again is it really about 'parentage' of concepts, i.e. transistors did not utilise the same scientific breakthroughs as vacuum tubes (at least the more recent ones, naturally if you go back far enough...) , so they are not closely related in technological terms? In that case I would say xhtml has xml as it mother and html as it father, so it is not really a detour?

As far as the 'view it in a browser and you can't see it' argument goes, I can't agree with that - very similar programming languages can't be compiled by each other's compilers, applications can't always open data files form previous/future versions, that is not sufficient to say the two are unconnected/unrelated?

Likewise 'same' or 'similar' are relative (and often also subjective) terms - no two dogs are the same, but two dogs of the same breed are often more similar than two dogs of different breeds, which depending on your criteria might be more similar than a given cat and dog, or then again may not...?

Last point, isn't history the only judge of a technological detour, in which case the question should be "will html prove to be a technological detour" - it isn't at the moment as there is no [b]definitive[/b] shift from one to the other.
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@Stephen_PhilbinNov 18.2005 — very similar programming languages can't be compiled by each other's compilers[/QUOTE]

Exactly my point. Whilst HTML and XHTML are not programming languages, the same thing applies. The vast majority of XHTML on the web today... isn't. The browser is almost always told to parse XHTML as something that it is not, and therefore can cause serious errors. Their base purpose is the same, but they are far from the same thing. You can extend the purpose of XHTML, but without doing so, there's no real purpose to XHTML right now.

As for HTML being a detour, well of course not. Like Ray said, a detour implies there was an alternative at the time of its creation, which there simply wasn't. HTML was not a detour to the pupose of, and is not the same as XHTML.
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 18.2005 — I came up with the idea that XHTML is basically a reincarnation of HTML, HTML being reborn as something else, and now it's growing in a different direction.

What do you guys think of that as an analogy?

Right or wrong, I cannot help but consider HTML and XHTML as related languages. ?
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@ray326Nov 19.2005 — Are HTML and XHTML at all related, beyond being markup languages, or are they utterly alien to each other?[/QUOTE]HTML is an SGML application. The same person who at IBM created SGML, created XML. What I don't know but I'm sure Charles does is whether XML is also an SGML application itself or a sibling of SGML. I.e. they're closely related in almost any way you'd care to make a comparison.
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@CharlesNov 19.2005 — XML is derived from SGML so I suppose it would be better to say that XML is a child of SGML.

And one person didn't create SGML. It took four. And it is completly an accident that their initials were SGM and L.
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@ray326Nov 19.2005 — It took four.[/QUOTE]Sure. It was IBM. One guy to do the work and three to manage him. ?
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 25.2005 — Okay, so here's another question for you guys: do you think that at least part of HTML will continue on through XHTML?
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@Jeff_MottNov 25.2005 — The semantics of all the elements and attributes of HTML have already continued on through XHTML. What other "parts" are you referring to?
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@Stephen_PhilbinNov 25.2005 — How about thinking of them as like Windows and Linux. A computer with Windows installed and a computer with Linux installed are both still computers, you can do computer type stuff on them both, and to a certain extent, you can have them be interoperable with one another. Beneath the surface though, they are still entirely different. Then comes the extensibility bit (the whole point of XHTML), one allows you to extend and improve the features and functionality of it. The other just wants to destroy its self, teake you with it and bleed you dry whilst it does it... Errr... I mean, doesn't.
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 25.2005 — The semantics of all the elements and attributes of HTML have already continued on through XHTML.[/QUOTE]

... Everything I read about HTML and XHTML says that the two are totally different beasts...
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@Jeff_MottNov 25.2005 — The semantics of all the elements and attributes means XHTML still has an element called HTML, within this element there is a HEAD and BODY element, the HEAD still needs a title, may have a base, and any number of instances of SCRIPT, STYLE, META, LINK and OBJECT. And so on. All of this (with an occassional minor change) has carried over from HTML.

These semantics are what HTML essentially is. XHTML is these same semantics implemented in a different language. The syntactic differences and extensibility of XHTML are almost entirely due to being implemented in XML rather than SGML.
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@felgallNov 25.2005 — HTML2 was an unsuccessful attempt to redefine HTML (which was designed from scratch) as a SGML derivitive. When that approach didn't work they tackled the problem from the opposite end and created XHTML as a version of XML which is a derivitive of SGML. HTML and XHTML had two different starting points and now that development on HTML standards has ceased in favour of XHTML they don't have the same final destination either.

At the moment both HTML and XHTML can display web pages in version 8 browsers. By treating XHTML as HTML (which it is close enough to do - and remember that they are much closer to one another than Javascript and Jscript) they can display equally well in version 6 browsers. With version 10 or 11 support for HTML will probably be dropped in favour of XHTML particularly since XHTML is already the only standard supported by many web browsers that run on systems other than computers (eg. mobile phones).

If the same code can be run as Javascript and Jscript (which are significantly different) then running XHTML as HTML is a trivial exercise by comparison. Of course both of these problems wouuld be solverd by disregarding Internet Explorer which understands neither XHTML nor Javascript.
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 25.2005 — *Tries to figure that out, and burns brain out*

One thing I gotta say, though. Will version 10 and 11 browsers be able to disregard HTML? That would be a lot of websites vanishing.
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@Jeff_MottNov 26.2005 — Almost certainly not. The code is already written, after all. Not much sense for them to simply trash all those decades of work.
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@felgallNov 26.2005 — Few web browsers designed to run on devices other than computers can process HTML - they all expect XHTML. Since most pages designed using HTML would not be able to display anything usable in the small displays that many of these devices have this does not cause any significant problem. As more people use such devices to access the web the web page authors will need to rethink their strategy. I think that HTML will eventually die a natural death but it will be later rather than sooner.
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@Jeff_MottNov 26.2005 — How does HTML vs. XHTML have any relation to the size of a device's display?
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@MstrBobNov 26.2005 — Few web browsers designed to run on devices other than computers can process HTML - they all expect XHTML. Since most pages designed using HTML would not be able to display anything usable in the small displays that many of these devices have this does not cause any significant problem. As more people use such devices to access the web the web page authors will need to rethink their strategy. I think that HTML will eventually die a natural death but it will be later rather than sooner.[/QUOTE]

Not really. Portable devices have grown more portable, which means that their browsers are more powerful. They can more and more handle "standard" webpages. Be it Windows CE using it's IE or Minimo, the portable version of Opera being used, or a custom job. They can indeed support HTML - they have to be of much use since the vast majority of the web uses HTML.

Look, XHTML and HTML have the same goal, really. They both are the publishing language for the web. They are both used to create websites. HTML was an SGML application. The W3C wants to use XML for the web, because its syntax is stricter and simpler to process. So naturally a replacement for HTML, which is based on SGML, is needed. XHTML. You needn't look any further than the XHTML 1.0 Specification itself:


XHTML is a family of current and future document types and modules that reproduce, subset, and extend HTML 4 [HTML4].
[/QUOTE]


XHTML is a reincarnation of HTML, that really is the best way to put it. That's exactly what it is. Now which to use for now is a totally different story. But to say they're unreleated is absurd. They are uncle and nephew in development, siblings in goal.
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 27.2005 — 
XHTML is a reincarnation of HTML, that really is the best way to put it.[/QUOTE]


*Blink* Wow, I actually said something right back there.
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@felgallNov 27.2005 — How does HTML vs. XHTML have any relation to the size of a device's display?[/QUOTE]

It is not so much that one supports small display screens and the other doesn't, it is more a matter of the thinking of those who use XHTML rather than HTML for creating their web pages. More XHTML users would be using stylesheets to control the appearance of the page and would be thinking of how their page might be treated in the future. Many who are using HTML are doing so because the WYSIWYG editor they are using to throw their page together generates HTML and they don't have a clue as to what the source code that is generated means. Many of these editors are quite a way behind the current standards and produce HTML that does not like small displays since the expectation was that screen resolution would allow for bigger displays and they completely overlooked alternative devices..
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@MstrBobNov 27.2005 — I've used HTML 4.01 for my clients. Precisely because I'm concerned about how visitors are able to view the page. If you want the page to be viewable in the largest amount of viewers, then HTML is by far the best choice currently. Making generalizations always leads to trouble.

Besides, it's a bit off topic. The topic is are XHTML and HTML related, not which to use. (Though it seems that often times XHTML + HTML discussions seem to lead to that topic).
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@Jeff_MottNov 27.2005 — It is not so much that one supports small display screens and the other doesn't, it is more a matter of the thinking of those who use XHTML rather than HTML for creating their web pages.[/quote]Ok. In your previous posting it sounded as though you were implying that the languages themselves are favored one way or the other. I'm glad you clarified that it is in fact a result of the user base for each language.

Though, I can't say I necessarily agree with your assessment. It has been my experience that editors (and people) have been abusing XHTML just as much as they did HTML. Most editors, for example, will simply have a "convert to XHTML" option, effectively turning HTML slop into XHTML slop.
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 28.2005 — I think there's a phrase saying "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," and those that use XHTML think that they're making a silk purse, but it's their coding that's leaving them with a sow's ear.

Just a question, sorta on topic, sorta not, but I thought I'd toss it out here. Has anyone ever heard of HTML 3.5? One of my college aquaintances said it was the most recent version of HTML he'd downloaded.

?
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@Jeff_MottNov 28.2005 — Has anyone ever heard of HTML 3.5? One of my college aquaintances said it was the most recent version of HTML he'd downloaded.[/quote]http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#previous

Not that I can see, unless it was something very much unofficial. And even more, how do you [i]download[/i] a version of HTML??? These are specifications; documents to be read, not programs to be downloaded and executed. Perhaps he or she was mistakenly referring to some editor or browser. (That's my best guess anyway.)
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 28.2005 — I haven't a clue. The nutcases they let into college these days. :rolleyes:
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@felgallNov 28.2005 — There is no reference to HTML 3.5 on the W3C site. The only version 3 specification it references is 3.2.
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@Mr_Initial_ManauthorNov 28.2005 — If I recall, THAT was a technological detour...
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