[html4all] "Blue sky thinking" (or "Thinking out of the box")

[Philip TAYLOR]

Jason White wrote:

> I would rather just make the switch to XML, which would also simplify the
> parsing rules considerably.
> 
> However, I think the real solution would be to design a TeX-like (or TRoff or
> Lout-like) language that would be secure, i.e., no unauthorized access to
> external resources, but which would allow the behaviours associated with new
> elements and attributes to be defined easily. It would then be a much more
> straightforward matter to extend HTML by simply writing macros or functions in
> this language, which could even be compiled for efficiency in a similar manner
> to Lisp byte code, or Java.
> 
> Given a powerful enough style language, and markup conventions that referred
> to the sources of the relevant scripts, it would be easy to define semantic
> markup for a particular Web site, or a particular class of documents/content.
> 
> The underlying idea is to move the markup language implementation as much as
> possible out of the compiled core of the user agent.

Oh, if only.  I've suggested this so many times (I have
s strong TeX background), and it is always met with
complete and utter silence.  Thank goodness there are
like-minded people in the world : I was beginning to
feel really isolated ...

** Phil.