Just occasionally, an article in the "popular" press arouses my passion to the extent that I write a letter to the editor. One such in the UK MacUser magazine by Jack Webber entitled "Publishing: Future Internet Standards" argues that as a purveyor of "fidelity", HTML and text based markup in general is well and truly dead, at least as far as the publishing industry is concerned. Instead, formats such as Acrobat PDF, and an intriguing new one which produces Java applets from page descriptions (Operation Uniqorn) are the way forward. Of how to structure and index "fidelity" or of metadata, no mention is made. A cynical view might be that currently, Lycos/Alta Vista etc have it too easy, and are depriving the publishing industry of valuable income because of the pre-eminence of HTML. Much better to make indexing "difficult" so that publishers once again have a powerful role to play. I feel that articles like Webber's, written with shall we say a vested interest in mind, do nothing to enhance the scientific objectives the web once had. Are scientists, who are committed to "content" (I have heard this obsession with content roundly condemned in some quarters) and publishers interested in "style" headed irrevocably in opposite directions? Comments welcome. Anyway, here is the letter I wrote "Dear Editor, Jack Webber (25 October) writes that as far as online publishing is concerned, HTML is dead. This brings to the fore a major issue rarely discussed regarding the Internet revolution, whether "content" or "style" should prevail. Tim Berners-Lee and other early pioneers of the Web recognised the pre-eminence of content in selecting a "markup" language derived from SGML. The increasing domination of the Web by professional publishers, and the current popularity of formats such as animated GIFs, PDF or Shockwave and Jack Webber's promotion of Operation Uniqorn suggests that this section of the community sees "style" or "page fidelity" as the way forward. Yet consider this. If the early Web had not had HTML, but had consisted almost entirely of style driven formats, would index engines such as Lycos, Yahoo, Alta Vista and the rest have arisen so quickly? Arguably, the ability to search the Internet is in large measure responsible for its increasing popularity. The true way to achieve the fidelity that Jack Webber seeks is through publishing "models", where style, heaven forbid, is actually under the control of the reader if they wish it, rather than the publishers who for some reason give the impression of being threatened by such a scenario. In my case, as a scientist interested in chemical models, we have been doing this since 1994 (see our display of this year's Nobel prize in chemistry; http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/motm/c60.html). And perhaps this does presage the future, in which the authors of content will increasingly part ways with the publishers of style!" Henry Rzepa. +44 171 594 5774 (Office) +44 594 5804 (Fax) ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)