Posted by Dave Balderstone on 02/16/07 05:38

In article <0001HW.C1FA99C600060991B022094F@news.supernews.com>,
TaliesinSoft <taliesinsoft@mac.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:05:23 -0600, Dave Balderstone wrote
> (in article <150220072305233044%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca>):
>
> [responding to quoting from Wikipedia]
>
> > Markup language != page description language by a long shot.
>
> Could you perhaps give a short definition of each.

HTML as a markup language describes parameters for a multitude of
possible interpreters rendering a page, based on what can be fairly
vague instructions, so that an instruction like 'font size="-2"' will
display different absolute results depending on the client doing the
interpretation (IE/Safari/Firefox/Omniweb/etc).

Postscript, OTOH, is a specific description language based on a known
and consistent interpreter, where an instruction such as '90 rotate 0
-612 translate' will do *exactly* the same thing no matter where it is
interpreted (HP/Agfa/Harlequin/etc), and display *exactly* the same
result.

I've coded both. Coding PS, I can be pretty damned confident that
whoever executes the code I write will see exactly what I see.

Coding HTML, I do not have that luxury.

--
You can't PLAN sincerity. You have to make it up on the spot! -- Denny Crane

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