Jim Choate wrote:

Forwarded message:

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Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 16:11:50 -0600 From: Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca> Subject: Microsoft ammunition

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But, if you're tired of the repetition, here's a reason you should sit through another sermon: RandomNoise's Coda. Coda lets you design entire Web pages in Java rather than use a mixture of HTML content, tags, and Java applets.

A Java-based Web page removes the distinction between application and data. It presents data just as an HTML page would, but every element on the screen has the potential to be an interactive part of a sophisticated application.

Mix this with the distributed processing model of Plan 9 and you may just have tomorrows computer environment.

I very much hope not. We designed HTML with very specific goals in mind, above all that the source be declarative and machine readable. That is why HTML can be edited by the recipient, fed into a voice synth or index by Alta-Vista. The Java based web pages will be opaque, just like postscript. Try to cut and paste from ghostview to emacs. Merging the distinction between applet and code will give lots of techno-geeks a nice orgasm but its the style of computing the Web has replaced. I have yet to see a single Java applet that has the slightest functional utility. I like Java as a language, particularly because it has killed C++ stone dead just as everyone thought it had taken over the world. I don't see that anyone has done anything with mobile code that is of interest however. If all you want is a better user interface add some more tags into HTML, implement Dave Raggets '94 draft perhaps. I think the idea of using Java to move an applet from the client to a server is very exciting but thats not in the Sun/Oracle game plan. The hypertext community had been beating the coda type model for decades before the Web. I was skeptical then and I'm more skeptical now. I turned Javascript, Active-X and Java off about 9 months back because I had little confidence in their security. I soon realised I was much happier when the page did not dance about in front of my eyes. I very rarely come to a site I can't access without them. If I could turn off animated Gifs as well I would be even happier. I think the future of computing is much more likely to lie in returning to simple but powerfull ideas. Presentation types, parallel languages and genuine process oriented object systems interest me much more. Phill