Re: Evolutionary question

James Whitescarver (jim@eies.njit.edu)
Wed, 22 Nov 1995 10:47:16 -0500 (EST)


>From: Stephen Turner <S.R.E.Turner@statslab.cam.ac.uk>
>
>Russell Holt wrote:
>->
>->
>-> These days, the term "World Wide Web" refers to what exactly? The collection
>-> of HTML documents accessible via the Internet? HTML docs + HTTP + CGI ?
>-> (or, excuse me, "network resources")... Is "The Web" separate
>-> from or an integral part of a browser's view of it?
>->
>
>FWIW, I use it to refer roughly to documents with a URL: including ftp,
>gopher, and probably newsgroups. I probably wouldn't include telnet or
>mailto though. I certainly wouldn't restrict to HTML or HTTP. But YMMV.
>
>--
I'd go further...

Originally it was all networked information, by every popular protocol
organized and presented using HTTP and HTML. Then we expanded it to include
all remote applications (via cgi and forms).

Now, most of the other protocols are being supplanted by HTTP and it's
roots as a unification of all protocols is less noticable, yet I'd
hesitate to exclude smtp, nntp, telnet, ftam, sql, x500 or any other
protocol in use.

What WWW is today may not be very clear, but it's future, I believe,
lies in HTTP++, i.e. providing connectivity amoung all our objects.

jim@njit.edu