A Vision For A More Sophisticated HTML

Steven J.Vaughn-Nichols

The WWW (World Wide Web) lets you publish documents with pages of text and graphics that are linked to other text and graphics stored locally or elsewhere on the Internet. These links are specified in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), which is a simplified application of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language).

HTML and SGML use tags embedded in documents to identify elements, but HTML only provides for a limited number of tags, such as headlines, paragraphs, and the anchor codes that specify links. To address the needs of authors who want more control over a document's appearance and to increase the reusabili ty of downloaded documents, committees are working on new versions of HTML. Meanwhile, other document formats (e.g., Adobe's PDF format) are appearing on the WWW, fueling the need for WWW browsers that can handle a variety of formats.

Eric Severson, executive vice president of Avalanche Development, foresees a scalable HTML that will ensure that any WWW user can read simple and complex WWW documents. In this vision, the WWW will use an object-oriented model: All browsers will understand the core classes (i.e., basic headings, paragraphs, and links), but more sophisticated browsers will utilize richer subclass distinctions. The analogy used is a black-and-white TV displaying a program, although the signal has color and stereo sound.