Darstellung einer Überschrift

[Gunnar Bittersmann]

@@Rolf B

Das hatte mich auch erstaunt; ich dachte immer, das WWW wäre eine Wirkung von HTML gewesen und nicht HTML die für das WWW designte Markup-Sprache.

Nö, Timbo^[1] entwickelte HTML, um sein Hypertext-System am CERN zu implementieren. Aber nicht aus dem Nichts:

“HTML wasn’t the first markup language to be used at CERN. Scientists there were already sharing documents written in a flavour of SGML—Standard Generalized Markup Language. Tim Berners‐Lee took this existing vocabulary from CERN SGML and used it as a starting point for his new markup language. Once again, it made sense to build on what people were already familiar with rather than creating something from scratch.”
— Jeremy Keith, Resilient Web Design, Chapter 1: Foundations

Und dann war er überrascht, welche Kreise HTML zog:

“Tim Berners‐Lee assumed that most URLs would point to non‐HTML resources; word‐processing documents, spreadsheets, and all sorts of other computer files. HTML could then be used to create simple index pages that point to these files using links. Because HTML didn’t need to do very much, it had a limited vocabulary. That made it relatively easy to learn. To Tim Berners‐Lee’s surprise, people began to create fully‐fledged documents in HTML. Instead of creating content in other file formats and using HTML to link them up, people began writing content directly in HTML.”

Zumindest ist die Idee von Hypertext älter…

Ein paar Zeilen höher:

“Tim Berners‐Lee did not invent hypertext. That term was coined by Ted Nelson, a visionary computer scientist who was working on his own hypertext system called Xanadu. Both Ted Nelson and Tim Berners‐Lee were influenced by the ideas set out by Vannevar Bush in his seminal 1945 essay, As We May Think. Bush, no doubt, was in turn influenced by the ideas of Belgian informatician Paul Otlet. Each one of these giants in the history of hypertext was standing on the shoulders of the giants that had come before them. Giants all the way down.”

🖖 Live long and prosper

PS: Wer Resilient Web Design noch nicht gelesen hat, sollte dies nachholen. Jeremy Keith schreibt über die Urprünge des Webs, grundlegende Technik, und Grundgedanken wie progressive enhancement.

Und wer nicht gerne liest, kann das auch als Hörbuch genießen. Gelesen vom Autor, nur echt mit den kreischenden Möven von Brighton.

---

1. Wo hab ich den Namen her? Ich glaube, Bruce Lawson nennt ihn so. ↩︎