Dear Final Debug: I know I’m not the first one to say this, but HTML is terrible. My company has a massive documentation program to build over the next six months. It’s an electronic documentation project that will work best with hyperlinks. Because of the nature of the product, we don’t have to worry about the documentation being in standard HTML. My question is: Can you recommend anything else out there? — Lisa Pepper, Chicago. Final Debug Responds: Lisa, since we get notes on this matter regularly, we’re going to use yours as an opportunity to address it in depth. This is a massive issue, one that we’ll cover in two parts. First, we’ll examine the shortcomings of HTML; next week, we’ll spell out some of the saner alternatives. HTML is everywhere. Why not work with it? Most proprietary hypertext systems, even Microsoft’s HLP system, are moving toward that standard. The arguments against HTML fall into one of four buckets: It’s inflexible. Even in its 4.0 iteration, HTML is a narrow, flat markup language. It can confuse content with formatting and its small number of universal attributes (nine) for displaying Java applets dramatically limits the way interactivity comes to a Web page. It’s almost impossible to extend. Unlike many modern computing languages, you can’t create new tags by altering existing ones. The arrival later this year of browsers that read XML (Extensible Markup Language) will bring SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) capabilities to Web pages. This allows you to add any number of new tags. But as developers are discovering, XML is not entirely compatible with. It’s nonstandard. Commands that work in Netscape browsers do nothing (or the wrong thing) in Microsoft browsers; some of Microsoft’s proprietary HTML tags do the same to Netscape browsers. Unless you are 100 percent sure which browser someone is using, you do not have total control over what your HTML pages will do. There are no tools. That’s a lie. What people really mean when they say something this is that there are no end-to-end tools that can deliver all you want from an HTML page. For example, you can’t input Java code directly into HTML. And even the most high-end site-management tools intended to shield developers from coding HTML are adding code-editing windows. There is no other way to manipulate some aspects of the code. Can you say “workaround”? For many, workarounds turn into runarounds. HTML may be the biggest theater in town, adding more and more new screens, but it’s not the only show in town. Come back next week and find out where else you might go.
A new contest Our last contest required some Java knowledge; this week we’ll see how well you know Perl. One of the Win32 extensions to Perl, Win32::Pipe, gives programmers access to the named pipes in Windows NT. Our question is: What are named pipes why would a Perl programmer want access to them? Be the first person to send us a correct answer, and we’ll send you copies of all three New Riders books on making the Web beautiful: reconstructing.web.graphics, designing.web.graphics.2, and coloring.web.graphics.2. As always, if you have a question for Final Debug, write us.
