Re: WWW/HTML history questions

Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@hal.com)
Thu, 29 Sep 1994 09:43:27 -0500


In message <9409291257.AA03458@flame.falch.no>, Steinar Bang writes:
>
>As such I find that I lack quite a bit of information about the early
>history of WWW and HTML. I'll appreciate all pointers (URLs, references
>to papers and articles) to WWW and HTML history.

> - I've been crawling around in the Webs of CERN and NCSA (and
> hal.com) without quite finding what I'm looking for. I'm also a
> regular reader of comp.text.sgml and the comp.infosystems.www.*
> news groups.

Well, this shows a deficiency in the navigational aids for the
historical documents on the web. The info is in there. Let's see if I
can find it:

>The current CERN HTML documentation says that the definition of HTML
>is based on SGML. Was HTML originally defined with basis in SGML, or
>is this an afterthought?

It's an afterthought. See:

Message-id: <9207160335.AA24812@pixel.convex.com>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: HTML DTD enclosed
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 92 22:35:19 CDT
From: Dan Connolly <connolly@pixel.convex.com>
http://gummo.stanford.edu/html/hypermail/.www-talk-1992.messages/152.html

Subject: rethinking the HTML DTD.
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 92 13:39:53 CDT
From: Dan Connolly <connolly@pixel.convex.com>
http://gummo.stanford.edu/html/hypermail/.www-talk-1992.messages/144.html

and other messages in that archive.

>Eg. did the NCSA people use CERN parser code as the "definition" of
>HTML (adding their own stuff along the road?)? Or did they base their
>implementation on a formally defined SGML DTD?

Ha! HaHahahahahahahahahaha. Chuckle. Snort. Ahem.
The former.

Dan