HTML as a language

[Neal Evenhuis]

On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Curtis Clark wrote:

> At 09:44 AM 3/24/99 +1100, Mike Dallwitz wrote:
> >You can find about 2000 plant descriptions in HTML at
> >     http://biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/www/data.htm
> >Some contain quotations from Shakespeare, for example, the description of
> >the Cruciferae under 'Flowering plants - families'.
>
> Enough! HTML is not content, it is format. If you were to look at a web
> page and see <FONT FACE="Arial, Geneva" SIZE="4">, it would be evidence of
> a busted page. When the page works properly, you never see the HTML; you
> only see the format it describes (and even then, only by the interpretation
> of your web browser).

Well, I guess this shows how fast we can digress when we're having fun. My
original posting was in answer to the question of what might be the most
popular SECOND "language" in the world. I thought I'd "stretch" the
definition and include HTML (since it IS by definition a language) to make
people think about its use on the web and how many people will be using
HTML whether they know it or not as a "second" language" when they create
web pages.

I had never intended HTML to be proposed as a standard language for
descriptions! I have no idea where that notion originated.

Aloha,

Neal Evenhuis