Dialects of the Web

Steven J.Vaughn-Nichols

HTML 0.9 This early version of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is outdated, but some Web documents are still in this format.

HTML 1.0 Today's most popular Web document language focuses primarily on the anchors and links that compose the strands of the Web.

HTML+ This is a set of HTML specifications from a white paper by Dave Raggett of Hewlett-Packard. Some of the ideas from this paper, such as interactive forms, have been incorporated into HTML 2.0. Others, like support for tables, figures, and math, may be part of HTML 3.0.

HTML (NetScape) This popular HTML variant b y NetScape Communications allows authors more basic control of their documents. For example, you can center text in these documents.

HTML 2.0 Recently blessed as an official standard by the Internet Engineering Task Force, HTML 2.0 defines a core set of features that all Web applications must support. It also defines the role of in-line images and adds a powerful interactive forms capability.

HTML 3.0 This HTML variation is expected to add more tags to make documents more accessible for information searching programs. Other proposals include tables, math, graphics and graphics/text objects, and methods to flow text around graphics.

SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) SGML is an ISO document format standard. DTDs (Document Type Definitions) identify structural items (e.g., chapter headings and footnotes) used in a class of documents. Tags indicate where the items occur.

PDF (Portable Document Format) PDF is Adobe Acrobat's document description format.