HTML is a markup language, not a programming language. It's like asking why Markdown can't handle includes. Some Markdown editors support them (just like some server-side tools do for HTML), but not all.
Including another document is much closer to a markup operation than a programming operation. We already include styles, scripts, images, videos, fonts...why not document fragments?
Markdown can't do most of those, so it makes more sense why it doesn't have includes, but I'd still argue it definitely should. I generally dislike LaTeX, but about the only thing I liked about it when writing my thesis was that I could have each chapter in its own file and just include all of them in the main file.
This isn’t programming. It’s transclusion[0]. Essentially, iframes and images are already forms of transclusion, so why not transclude html and have the iframe expand to fit the content?
As I wrote that, I realized there could be cumulative layout shift, so that’s an argument against. To avoid that, the browser would have to download all transcluded content before rendering. In the past, this would have been a dealbreaker, but maybe it’s more feasible now with http multiplexing.
With Early Hints (HTTP code 103), it seems especially feasible. You can start downloading the included content one round-trip after the first byte is sent.
No, HTML is fundamentally different because (for a static site without any JS dom manipulation) it has all the semantic content, while stylesheets, images, objects, etc. are just about presentation.
I think the distinction is "semantic on what level/perspective?". An image packaged as a binary blob is semantically opaque until it is rendered. Meanwhile, seeing <img> in the HTML or the file extension .jpg in any context that displays file extensions tells me some information right out of the gate. And note that all three of these examples are different information: the HTML tag tells me it's an image, whereas the file extension tells me it's a JPEG image, and the image tells me what the image contains. HTML is an example of some kind of separation, as it can tell you some semantic meaning of the data without telling you all of it. Distinguishing and then actually separating semantics means data can be interpreted with different semantics, and we usually choose to focus on one alternative interpretation. Then I can say that HTML alone regards some semantics (e.g. there is an image here) while disregarding others (e.g. the image is an image of a brick house).
I'm not sure what isn't computing. Presumably you know (or have looked up) the meaning of "semantic"? Images and videos are graphic, not semantic, content. To the extent they are rendering semantic content, that content should be described in the alt tag.
I'm not defending it, because when I started web development this was one of the first problems I ran into as well -- how the heck do you include a common header.
But the original concept of HTML was standalone documents, not websites with reusable components like headers and footers and navbars.
That being said, I still don't understand why then the frames monstrosity was invented, rather than a basic include. To save on bandwidth or something?
Frames were widely abused by early web apps to do dynamic interfaces before XHR was invented/widely supported. The "app" had a bunch of sub-frames with all the links and forms carefully pointing to different frames in the frameset.
A link in a sidebar frame would open a link in the "editor" frame which loaded a page with a normal HTML form. Submitting the form reloaded it in that same frame. Often the form would have multiple submit buttons, one to save edits in progress and another to submit the completed form and move to the next step. The current app state was maintained server side and validation was often handled there save for some basic formatting client side JavaScript could handle.
This setup allowed even the most primitive frame-supporting browsers to use CRUD web apps. IIRC early web frameworks like WebObjects leaned into that model of web app.
Oh my goodness, yes you're right, I'd forgotten entirely about those.
They were horrible -- you'd hit the back button and only one of the frames would go back and then the app would be in an inconsistent state... it was a mess!
You needed to hit the reset button (and hoped it worked) and never the back button! Yes, I suffered through early SAP web apps built entirely with frames and HTML forms. It was terrible.
I don't love JavaScript monstrosities but XHR and dynamic HTML were a vast improvement over HTML forms and frame/iframe abuse.
Really well written web form applications were a delight in 2001 and a large improvement over conventional applications written in Windows. It helped that application data was in a SQL database, with a schema, protected by transactions, etc as opposed to a tangle of pointers that would eventually go bad and crash the app -- I made very complicated forms for demographic profiling, scientific paper submission, application submission, document search, etc. If you did not use "session" variables for application state this could at worst cause a desynchronization between the browser and the server which (1) would get resynchronized at any load or reload and (2) never get the system into a "stuck" state from the user viewpoint and (3) never lose more than a screen full of work.
Try some other architecture though and all bets were off.
Amazon's web store looked and worked mostly the same as it does now, people were very impressed with MapQuest, etc.
Applications like that can feel really fast, almost desktop application fast, if you are running them on a powerful desktop computer and viewing them on another computer or tablet over a LAN
The original concept of HTML was as an SGML subset, and SGML had this functionality, precisely because it's very handy for document authoring to be able to share common snippets.
Yes: the US administration is infested with anti-intellectuals who falsely believe that they're self-made ubermensch. So anyone else is obviously beta or worse.
Funniest thing I found out recently: the whole debacle of beta vs alphas was based on studies on wolfs on stressful conditions (i.e., cages).
Second funniest thing I found out not so recently: the whole debacle, which I believed and hurt me personally, in hindsight, is the whole study about "kids who wait for candies instead of eating it right away fare better in life" failed to take into account kids' social-economical status.
This, plus the no doubt institutionalization of Scientific Studies (tm) (e.g., salt causes cardio problems, as a way to steer focus away from sugar), makes me apply 50% in the doubt scale for every study less than 50 years old.
Additionally, I'm told the waterfall model was never prescribed as a good method, but it was the most prominent picture of a old study which affirmed waterfall as very flawed, and people failed to properly read the text.
PS: on topic, everyone believes that of the opposite team; I found very enlightening an article which said "Find allies in unlikely places. One of my most surprising sources of support during my trial(s) was hard-right Brexiter (...). Find threads of connection and work from there", by a Remain person.
Let's hope that may break the cycle of default (a few times undeserved) mistrust.
> the whole debacle of beta vs alphas was based on studies on wolfs on stressful conditions (i.e., cages).
The whole alpha/beta meme is a perfect microcosm of what we see today: ardent denial of the complexities of reality. It is a half-truth (some people fare better in the sexual marketplace) that gets elevated to the status of belief. When it becomes a belief, then intellectual heels are dug in. Conflicting information is downplayed, and no amount of reality seems to shift opinions. Perception is twisted to confirm pre-existing beliefs.
The belief must be held. It has been made to serve some psychological purpose for the holder, even if it just a subconscious justification for their own behavior.
You need humility to transcend the local maxima that every human falls into. It's the only way to counterbalance the prone-to-flaws hardware our brains run on. But a lot of our society tries to beat it out of people.
That’s because no amount of reality can make its way into someone’s algorithmic feed. On every social media platform I’ve been on with engagement algorithms, the algorithm creates an intellectual prison where bad ideas that speak to our emotions get reinforced. I see this in my own feeds where it decides, since I like video games and fitness, that I probably should check out these alt-right grifters and the manosphere. Once you click on one of those videos, you quickly get locked in to that content. And unfortunately, I don’t think people have a clue that it’s happening as it speaks to their pain, delusions, what have you.
It's one of those cases, "people should know better". I think targeted advertisement and social media must be regulated, if not for everything else only to dictate the amount of non-chronological events allowed per items.
The error in it is just.. yeah.. it's not shining a good light on you or the position you're taking. Especially in light of the subject being discussed.
Have you ever really visited China? I would just say go to your preferred youtube channel and watch any chinese city and any indian city and then say the same thing as above.
Don't base your opinion of China on YouTube channels that show you a few modern places in Chongqing or the high-speed train and pretend that this represents all of China. They don't show you the homeless people, the abandoned half-built high-rises, the dirty parks full of plastic waste, the barred-up windows because break-ins are so prevalent.
And travel 30 minutes outside of any major city. You'll see people living in broken-down buildings without heating when it's below zero, roads that haven't been maintained in decades, and poor people trying to jump in front of your car for insurance money.
China is neither the technological wonder of the world portrayed in these videos nor a bunch of peasants. It's a vast, complex country with a lot of good and a lot of bad.
Exactly the same could be said about several 1st world democratic countries. The point is India level of development is far lower than its neighbor having a similar population size and having come from as far down, or worse than India. The difference is a government that provided (more) benefits to its population.
That's the cost of having people protesting, blocking and badmouthing govt, for example you are doing right now. Try something like this in China against CCP, your account will be blocked within hour and cops will visit you in a day.
I would love to say the same of India but unfortunately India has all of those problems and even the best parts of India don't hold a candle to even tier 2 cities in China.
'In fact, there's an old saying about Mussolini that goes something like this: "Mussolini made the trains run on time." In other words, even dictators have their good points. Sure, fascism is an often brutal model of efficient government, full of poverty and corruption, but hey, at least the trains were newly punctual.
"Italy's railway had entered into a state of disrepair after World War I, but after the war ended, there had been a number of measures implemented to boost efficiency. Mussolini, of course, liked to say he was responsible for those improvements. However, those changes actually took place before he assumed power, so technically, he couldn't really take credit (although that didn't stop him). More to the point, the trains didn't always run on time, either."
You can disagree with their motives and methods but it's undeniable that the Chinese government is working incredibly hard for themselves and their citizens. The sheer manufacturing dominance of China speaks for itself, as does their presence on the global stage, as does their looming influence over geopolitics.
And yeah, they put out a shit ton of propaganda too. But it being propaganda doesn't by virtue of that fact make it lies. One would argue the more effective kind of propaganda is the kind that's verifiable fact, even if ideologically slanted in delivery.
And you know, I'm also biased as an American currently living under the "group of incompetent jackasses" administration, but I'd love for my government to do anything besides shutting down departments that make business owners mad and handing out tax breaks to the richest assholes here every fuckin day.
Yeah, but maybe it is a powerful country because it has a lot of hard-working people with improving conditions, not because it has a communist government. I mostly think that the Chinese government harmed Chinese development in the future with their shortsighted policies, like the one-child policy.
Also, does the government really work for its citizens if they are doing a genocide of one nation in the country?
Yeah, I agree that the Trump situation is frustrating and idiotic, however, we should not resort to shifting towards totalitarians. That's problematic thinking.
It's a powerful country because of the leadership though. Policies and culture shape the country. China was extremely poor for a long time, and it wasn't because the people were lazy back then.
And where are you getting your information? The most interesting thing is how U.S. politicians often use the phrase 'Chinese Communist Party' when talking about China, invoking Cold War-era connotations of communism. But everyone knows that the only things still 'communist' about China are the party's name, its symbols, and the flag.
I’ve been to both the U.S. and China. There's significantly more propaganda about China in the U.S. than there is about the U.S. in China. Stop blindly believing what others say—go see for yourself. In the coastal and Tier-1 cities, you’ll witness how a population the size of the entire United States enjoys a higher standard of living than the American middle class, with greater affordability, and clean, safe, and beautiful urban environments (with infrastructure that is way ahead of US).
There are undeniably ways in which the command economy is simply more efficient. The party can decide that in 10 years they will be world leader in this or that, put resources toward it, and accomplish that goal. That doesn't mean the Chinese way is best for everyone, and there are certainly humanitarian issues, there are inefficiencies typical of a command economy, and there are unintended consequences, (tofu dreg, etc) but it's undeniable that they're currently getting stuff done.
This is simply and verifiably false. How much new transmission infrastructure has China built in the last 2 decades? How much renewable generation? Say what you will about competition of ideas, but when it comes to getting the big iron projects completed and objectives met China has us beat, hands down. Building and maintaining infrastructure isn't working in the US right now.
I highly doubt GDP numbers in China are falsified, but GDP per capita doesn't matter much when median household incomes in China remain in the $250-350/mo (EDIT: $400-500/mo, good callout, needed to update priors from covid) range according to Chinese government statistics.
This is why Chinese overproduction exists - incomes are too low for most Chinese consumers to purchase higher value goods that are made in China, because you aren't upgrading your cellphone or car every year when your household income is in that range.
Pro-Chinese sentiment has increased lately here in the West it seems, and part of that must be because the Chinese have managed to put their best propaganda forward. But I don’t see how we can have any sane discussion when one side of the argument can be bad-faith dismissed off the bat.
It seems clear above commenters are referencing that China performs better at accomplishing certain tasks, such as large scale infrastructure development, that isn’t comparable to other countries that “do stuff”.
Protonmail did not comply with Chinese law. I can't say I'm a fan, but this wasn't targeted at Protonmail, it was the same with Google. China requires this because China is a target for U.S. imperialism and must protect itself. The internet, mainly owned by the USA, is basically like radio free asia dot com.
Protecting Chinese technology firms also allowed China to grow highly competitive national companies, a phenomenon we don't see as much anywhere US technology companies were allowed free reign.
> The applicable Chinese law is the China Internet Security Law which came into force in 2017. The law essentially stipulates that foreign companies which operate in China and process the private information of Chinese citizens, must store such data in China and make it available to Chinese authorities upon request. An example of a company which has had to comply with this law is Apple, which has extensive operations in China. A similar law went into effect in Russia back in 2015 (known as Federal Law No. 242-FZ).
Explain how the "internet [is] mainly owned by the USA."
The robust Chinese technology sector is no doubt a reflection of smart and industrious Chinese people. Those smart and industrious people include those in the CPC engaged in wholesale industrial espionage.
The largest technology companies are headquartered in USA and have extensive ties with the US state??? I don't understand how you can think Europe, Africa, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are unable to develop comparable technology, it's simply that the market opportunities are gobbled up by behemoths grown where the internet was invented backed by US diplomacy.
Because Duolingo is perhaps the most well-known language learning app right now, people call their apps 'alternatives to Duolingo' regardless of how much they actually have in common.
