[Sigia-l] DHTML Menus and HTML Widgets

[John Fullerton]

> It's about the inherent
> nature of the work involved. Once you leave the markup (mostly
tagging for
> presentation) and write executable code you're just in a different
realm,
> with different problems, methodologies, skill sets, workflow, tools,
etc.

Certainly the kind of reasoning that is required for writing
applications is different than writing text. For example, writing an
application that will find links in a text file involves reasoning or
working through a process that will accomplish the purpose including
selecting functions in the programming language.

However, say one were creating an application that that included the
function of centering a title at the top of the screen. The code to
center the title would probably work with any text phrase (within the
code's limits). Using functions such as the center text function as
needed throughout a program is part of the task of programming and the
function of centering text could be accessed in a way like it was in
earlier versions of HTML. When <center></center> is put around a text
phrase, the other functionality of the program could center that text.
All of the tasks done in HTML (I guess) could be done through basically
writing one's own browser, and for a task of writing a browser to show
only one HTML document, the coding of the only displayed document could
be thought of as part of the programming process. Editing HTML is
editing data and an HTML document does not process data; however,
programs do contain data, and data can be encoded (as an HTML document
has codes added) for particular uses. Data can be contained in a program
in order to make the data statements evidently programming statements
:)

One could use Javascript to open a link in another window or use the
anchor target parameter. Then people could copy the Javascript code as
easily as copying the target code. Creating functionality in a
programming language involves work very different than editing data, yet
a program is itself data, and some of my strongest memories of
programming include editing array data. The actual lines of code could
be called data, and part of writing code is editing code, and that is
editing data called programming language statements.

Now, when writing an application that works with text files, I do not
think of the text files typically as part of the application, and I'm
not saying that writing HTML is the same thing as writing an
application, however it is like some of the work in writing script, or
working with HTML tags is the same kind of work as part of the work that
people have accomplished while writing programs.

Have a nice day
John Paul Fullerton
j-fullerton at tamu.edu