HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?)

From	anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?)
Date	2015-02-14 10:21 +0000
Organization	Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Message-ID	<2015Feb14.112126@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> (permalink)
References	(2 earlier) <slrnmdq6v7.asl.empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@Ferrycy.localdomain> <mblehn$igq$1@dont-email.me> <mblgbb$qa7$1@dont-email.me> <mblidn$3lq$1@dont-email.me> <mblmod$nhh$1@dont-email.me>

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Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> writes:
>You better ask Tim Berner-Lee why he invented HTML, and didn't just put 
>LaTeX into his browser; the latter would have made a lot of sense, since all 
>the people at CERN usually write their stuff in LaTeX anyways.  But it would 
>have been more work upfront.

I think it would have been less work; the browser would have been just
wget (new, because it did not exist at the time. but simple to write),
latex and xdvi, with extensions for hyperlinks.  The problem would
have been that on the hardware of 1990 , it would have been too slow.
Our LaTeX benchmark takes 93s on a 486/66
<http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/franz/latex-bench>.  The best
hardware in 1990 was something like a 33MHz 486 or R3000, and
Berners-Lee had to target the majority of existing hardware, e.g.,
something like a 16MHz 386.  Ok, a web page would not take as much
time as our LaTeX benchmark, but still too much.

>Probably Tim thought, using HTML would make his job easier, because he did 
>just implement a tiny subset of LaTeX.  At that time, it was simpler, and he 
>could even integrate an interactive web page editor, because it was so 
>simple.  And then, they had to expand this tiny thing to a full-blown 
>typsetting engine with styles, with math, and a lot of other stuff.

Did they have to?  HTML 2.0 is fine for most of my uses, and 4.0
covers the rest (and provides lots of unneeded fluff).  I don't need
styles, and I am pretty sure they were not needed for what Berners-Lee
had in mind, either.  So he took the Forth approach: Created something
new tailored for his needs instead of catering for future expansion.

Why he based HTML on SGML instead of on LaTeX or the kind of markup
used in Usenet postings is a good question.  HTML is worse than either
for writing stuff manually, and that has led to stuff like WYSIWYG
editors for HTML, which were pretty bad.  OTOH, TeX as a language is
also badly designed, so I can understand that he did not want to go
there.

Anyway, the Chuck Moore approach of throwing everything away upon
encountering new requirements and designing the new thing from scratch
was not taken for HTML.  Instead, the tried and proven methods of the
software industry were used, and they result in bloat.  The web is 25
years old, and has expanded in usage far beyond the original vision,
so it's no wonder that browsers are bloated (the most popular ones are
based on Mosaic from 1993, so even the software itself has seen
"organic growth" for 22 years).  And Opera also has a 20-year history.

And while users may moan about bloated software, they still buy it,
and let the slim competition die from lack of revenue.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2014: http://www.euroforth.org/ef14/

Thread

Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-12 12:13 -0800
  Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-12 12:56 -0800
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? empty-buffers <empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@gmail.NEITHER-THIS.com> - 2015-02-12 21:32 +0000
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-13 13:08 -0500
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-13 19:39 +0100
          Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-13 14:14 -0500
            Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-13 21:28 +0100
              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-13 14:22 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 01:34 +0100
              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-02-13 22:42 -0800
              HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-14 10:21 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 19:37 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-14 11:13 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 21:07 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-14 12:50 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 22:32 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-14 15:10 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-15 10:34 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-15 22:15 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-16 12:45 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-15 13:55 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-16 13:52 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-16 15:47 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-02-16 09:05 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-17 12:21 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-02-20 13:23 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-20 22:33 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-21 15:14 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-21 20:23 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-02-21 11:33 -0800
              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-14 10:14 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-22 01:57 -0500
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-22 18:35 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-23 01:58 -0500
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-23 04:59 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-23 19:18 -0500
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-23 18:09 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-24 01:04 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-24 02:51 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-24 10:23 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-23 21:19 +0100
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-23 17:58 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-24 01:07 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-24 02:19 -0800
              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Paul E Bennett <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2015-02-15 12:18 +0000
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? empty-buffers <empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@gmail.NEITHER-THIS.com> - 2015-02-13 18:55 +0000
          Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Melzzzzz <mel@zzzzz.com> - 2015-02-13 20:27 +0100
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2015-02-13 09:53 -1000
  Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? "WJ" <w_a_x_man@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-13 14:18 +0000
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-13 11:03 -0800
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-02-13 22:46 -0800
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-14 02:35 -0800
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2015-02-14 18:47 +0100
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-02-14 18:56 -0800
  Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Ilya Tarasov <ilya74.tarasov@gmail.com> - 2015-02-15 17:10 -0800
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-16 01:20 -0800
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2015-02-16 12:35 +0100
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2015-02-16 08:12 -1000
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Ilya Tarasov <ilya74.tarasov@gmail.com> - 2015-02-16 15:17 -0800

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