Did you know that PostScript was one of the first universal page rendering languages that was compatible across platforms. Primarily it was a printer markup language, and was supported by major printer companies. HP and Apple both supported PostScript heavily in device drivers. You could output your print to a PostScript file and open it with a simple text editor; the contents were human readable, although very complex.
There was an initiative for a while whereby PostScript would be extended and could be used to render applications in a GUI screen. Because of the already existing power in the language, screen designs could be very complicated and OS/device agnostic. I guess that was what actually killed it. Vendor wars wouldn’t allow something to level the playing field back in the mid to late 80s when the war for the OS was raging.
Today we have a similar effort in HTML5. The players have changed and the browsers are no longer tied to specific operating systems quite so closely. Is it enough to simplify the task of the developer wanting to reach out to multiple platforms? Is there enough coverage of the new capabilities of the HTML5 specification to assure the developer doesn’t have to write a lot of code dealing with exceptions not supported by one browser or another? Has the user community embraced the newer versions of browsers enough to allow writing apps primarily in HTML5, and to ignore browsers not supporting the new markup language specifications?
Share your thoughts online or by email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben