Re: Local program execution in WWW browsers

Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund (sg04%[email protected])
Thu, 14 Apr 94 14:19:03 EDT

] If NCSA is willing to open Mosaic to external application developers via
] a well-defined API and the WWW community is willing to support the
] extension of HTML(+) to incorporate SGML external entities and
] sub-documents, I think there is the potential of implementing a true
] compound document browser.
]
] However, without NCSA's and the WWW community's support, there is very
] little hope.
]

This is my sense of the situation also. But I like to put a more
positive and optimistic spin on things.

Currently, Mosaic has become the sin-quo-non for WWW clients. It
has done such a good job at hiding the details of the web, gopher,
news, etc that a lot of high level mangagement and Buisness Week
writers only refer to Mosaic, and leave out mention of the WWW.

Ok, so that means there is tremendous pressure on NCSA to act
as the gatekeeper for client upgrades. Yes, they did not ask
for this role, but that is how it is developing.

There are techniques, ala Fresco and TK, for "seemlessly" folding
in active components into a WWW client. I see tremendous pressure
being taken off of NCSA, and a explosion of seemlessly added
features to the client - if we can only agree on a API for
allowing compound document inclusion into the Mosaic (and other
WWW clients).

It is definitely a win-win scenario.

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Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund [email protected] [MIME]
GTE Laboratories, Waltham MA ftp://ftp.gte.com/pub/circus/home/home.html
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