In <Pine.HPP.3.95.961222170314.8814C-100...@hpplus05.cern.ch>,
"Alan J. Flavell" <flav...@mail.cern.ch> writes:
| On Sat, 21 Dec 1996, Arjun Ray wrote:

|> The "history" that places 2.0, 3.0 and 3.2 in a unified sequence is
|> bogus.

| Quite so.  How sad to see history re-invented within a mere couple
| of years.

It's known as Spin Control. Consider the latest agonism over Netscape
and stylesheets. Naturally, The Official Hagiography will need to be
some convenient and comfortable story, perhaps like this:

(From
http://home.netscape.com/comprod/products/communicator/guide.html)

= Style sheets. In the past, Web page designers wishing to affect
= aspects of page design such as colors and text sizes had to write
= HTML tags for each element. With style sheets, designers not only
= get complete control over these elements, they also can build a
= style sheet standard that can be leveraged repeatedly (similar to a
= template).

In the past? HTML tags? Really? Why was that? Who invented <FONT>?

Here's the history that must not come to light:

1. Oct 13 1994 - Marc A. announces the first beta of Netscape 0.9:
     http://www.eit.com/www.lists/www-talk.1994q4/0187.html

2. Oct 10 1994 - Hakon Lie announces the first public draft of CSS:
     http://www.eit.com/www.lists/www-talk.1994q4/0153.html

That's right, folks, Cascading Style Sheets are at least *that* old.
And surely a draft was the result of prior discussions, no?

3. Oct 14 1994 - Marc A. clarifies some time lines:
 http://www.acl.lanl.gov/HTML_WG/html-wg-94q4.messages/0088.html

= we started the company April 4, hired the core staff in April and
= May, started coding June 1, entered alpha/beta around Sep 1, and
= just released to the net -- things have been a bit hectic :-).

Doing what, one wonders, given that stylesheets had been *the* topic
of discussion since 1993 on the www-talk and www-html mailing lists:
   http://www.eit.com/www.lists/

4. May 31 1994 - Dave Raggett refers everyone to the proceedings at
WWW'94 (where, BTW, HTML+ became HTML 3.0):
   http://www.eit.com/www.lists/www-html.1994q2/0012.html

5. May 25-27 1994 - The First International Conference on the WWW:
   http://www.eit.com/www.lists/www-talk.1993q4/0898.html

During that summer, the media blitz over "Jim Clark and the Mosaic
boys" had been relentless. Would such "talent" find a way to support
stylesheets?

Nope. With fanfare, flourish and folderol, <CENTER> and <FONT> came
into the world...

= In the past, Web page designers wishing to affect aspects of page
= design such as colors and text sizes had to write HTML tags for each
= element.

Humbug? Disingenuousness? Of course not! Stylesheets are new! The
Official Hagiographies will all say so!

:ar