Posted by Helpful Harry on 02/16/07 06:26

In article <150220072338430009%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca>, Dave
Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:

> 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.

That's not quite 100% true ... only about 99.9%. :o)

HTML code is often "broken" by incompatibilities in (usually) Internet
Explorer.

Postscript code is often "broken" by incompatibilities in non-Adobe
versions of Postscript - the so-called "postscript compatible" found in
some printers for example. For example, some printers thrown tantrums
about printing a shaped with a fill colour of "white". Thankfully you
don't often hit these problems.

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

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