Created 2004-08-08 Modified 2009-04-11
Chelton Evans
Objective
Comparison
XHTML header
Tags
Overloading Tags
Organic Documents
The Browser as a State Machine
Conclusion
To compare a traditional document with a html document. To explore the most modern form of html called xhtml. To understand what a document may become.
Since the invention of writing to the explosion of the information age what documents are, how they communicate are the workings of our society.
In some ways we are only beginning to make documents. As our consciousness awakens so too do our documents change. Documents from everybody can now be made in colour.
html is many things. Since the creation of the internet the world has come together to create the biggest library ever seen and free to people who have access to computers. All different computers communicate documents with each other by html.
html is evolving and is many different things. The main focus is one XML which is a universal document processor. For example it is possible to give a browser a document with a pointer on how to interpret the document so that it can be displayed, even telling the browser how to generate the fonts on the fly. Imagine XML as a big Swiss army knife.
html links together all other types of documents. For example you can insert pictures of various types(.jpg, .png, ... ) The browser displays them. Microsoft spreadsheets can be linked to so the user clicks on the hyper link and the computer their on handles the request to interpret the document.
Anyone who has access to the internet and a computer has access to all the tools they need for free. e.g. Graphics picture manipulation use Gimp, Microsoft word equivalent use Open Office, ... Free software is powering the revolution.
A traditional document is without color, has no interactive components and has a fixed geometry. Diagrams, references are used.
Compare the traditional diagrams with todays ones. You can have anything today that you care to create : pictures, color diagrams,... In my opinion we have become a much more visual society capable of understanding things in a visual sense. Making this free and part of the document let people rely less on words to communicate that which is often communicated better by pictures.
The use of color schemes has added extra dimensions to presenting information. By default a blue is used for hyper links which are pointers to other documents.
Paper dominates traditional documents as a medium whereas html lives on paper secondary to the computer screen. However since it links to other documents which have their medium in paper (e.g. word and pdf documents) html is both.
Layout is very varied in html as different browsers display html differently. Contrast this with a word document (WISIWIG) with a html document and the word document appears better laid out and generally appears the same . This doesn't make all that much sense with html. The user often resizes their browsers and hence fixed width cuts information off. There may also be incompatibilities with fonts, different sized monitors, ... and finally different browsers to interpret the html. It is much harder to write for everyone than yourself.
Html can carry video, sound and graphics which have no correlation with the traditional document. Plus it can do these in dynamic ways. Books can not do this.
Dynamic information can be delivered in real time. e.g. Link your website to the stock markets around the world and look in real time stock price changes for free. A static document can not do this because all the information has to be known when it is built. But information is naturally dynamic and you need documents that understand this.
Hyper links and cross references are similar but hyper links can do so much more. The can link to any document. Consider a reference where you put energy into looking up the reference, requesting it if necessary and perhaps waiting weeks for the reference. With a hyper link the information may be instantly available. This is a key point. Humans react totally differently physiologically to an instant event than to one which will take along time to pursue. By reducing the time/effort to get to the information people are much more likely to pursue the idea rather than axe it because there is not the resources(time).
Unfortunately I don't have the reference but a book about websites discussed user/client reaction times in bands. When people are waiting for something to happen their reactions were studied. e.g. People were prepared to wait the longest for pornography and dead bodies.
The main drive was to reduce website download times and redesign them better to allow users to access the information within. You could compare this with traditional document layout for communicating the ideas.
The accessibility of documents is also an issue. A paper document is more secure, less likely to be read and hence can be safer. It is often limited to certain viewers. In contrast a disgruntled shareholder of a company puts a complaint in a business user-group and hell breaks loose. Human dynamics come in to play. The golden rule of an electronic document is be prepared to have the document read by anyone (assume an digital document is public always).
I cut and past these as basic document templates. The structure is as follows. What type of document an I is defined by the header - the first bit of text which the browser reads.
For the strict document type there are some components which all these documents must have to qualify for that document type. For example every strict document has to have a title.
Also notice the link tag which says where to find css definitions if you provide them. These let you tailor documents to have a common look and feel. e.g. Set margin widths, font size,...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="comsci/css/s011.css"/> <style type="text/css"> </style> <title> </title> </head> <body> <div> </div> </body> </html>
Html is a type of document formatter that unlike WISIWIG formats
text with commands. The html is hand edited or produced by a third
party package. Tags are the commands and make up a set of editor primitives.
e.g. <p> <\p> tags are short for paragraph tags and
are used to build a paragraph.
The most notable feature about tags are that there is a beginning tag and an end tag. The earlier browsers were less strict and there will always be a place for sloppy html, but correct use of the tags produces documents of higher quality. For a document to be validated it must be totally valid - no tag errors detected.
Through the evolution of html several of the older tags died. Backward compatibility is maintained by the type of html document it is, but the newer types are strictly disallowed from using the old hacks. So the technology is both backward compatible and forward in killing old technologies and creating new ones.
The browser can be pretty primitive and will do what you ask, but it does keep track of its state. If you start floating chunks of text you need to tell the browser to return to the start of the line in the same way you use the return key to a paragraph.
The point is that turning on certain buttons of the browser means you have to take responsibility and manage it which at times not easy.
For floating text (carving up the surrounding space) use the div
tag. Do not use tables as a lot of packages do because you can not control
formatting. Here the issue is philosophical as well as practical. You as the
document writer decide which technology to use. Tables are simpler but limiting.
The div tag is more complicated because you have to divide a document up,
but for strict html you have to do this anyway.
If your not a programmer you may not have heard of overloading but let me say its very useful for document formatting. By giving the same tag slightly different meanings where convenient formating can be controlled for effect.
For example whenever I want to display maths or discuss algorithms I change the text color to red.
Transverse edge in one direction.
move left, if edge can see point add to view list;
else terminate.
The technology used for overloading is part of html and is placed in css styles sheets, see s011.css .
A lot of writings in the past have been subject to censorship or review. This has come under the guise of discipline. But todays society is challenging these in two ways : it is empowering anyone who wants to write with access to the biggest writing place and library the internet.
For example what our culture may find unacceptable is in another a way of life. I have this term raw information which I use to describe communication before it has undergone too much refinement. e.g. A diary can be viewed as raw information because its what you think, so can someones scientific notebook.
When a document is processed the personality is often diluted. For research papers in mathematics the author could present the facts but leave out or hide the original idea in generality, so presenting the finished product and burying its secrets.
By giving people the power back to write and communicate what they want without the censorship and formal society shit there is hope that real work can again be done. Vast amounts of my time is spent reverse engineering other peoples ideas. Just because something is easy to read and attractive to read does not mean its not shit.
Organic documents are when someone has done something not to a formula. For example my aunt does these snakes and ladders board. When I mentioned that the squares were not truly symmetric she replied that this her artwork and that lack of symmetry makes it work. I then saw my own creativity could benefit by not trying to homogenize information, but leaving the imperfections and putting the energy in to other uses.
This links in with the internet because you can do whatever you want, publish what you want and learn.
Html eats traditional documents alive. Html uses many different technologies which can be integrated/used where needed. Html is in the spirit of the free software movement.
It is also put together with gafa tape with competing interests.