[xml-dev] Deja vu?

["Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com>]

I stumbled upon this last night ... written in 1997, looking back at the
early history of HTML: 
http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.wired.com/
news/topstories/0%2C1287%2C3454%2C00.html

"HTML continued to grow, with  new, powerful, and exciting  tags. We got
<background>, <frame>, <font>, and of course, <blink>. Microsoft jumped into
the game, and <marquee>, <iframe>, and <bgsound> started competing for room
in the spec. And all this time, the W3C furiously debated something called
HTML3, a sprawling document outlining all sorts of neat new features that
nobody supported (remember <banner> and <fig>?). It was now 1995, and things
were an absolute mess.

Something needed to give. ... The HTML arm of the W3C changed course and
started collecting and recording current practice in shipping browsers,
rather than designing a future, unattainable version of the language. HTML3
was dropped entirely, and work began on HTML3.2, which, ironically, was far
less technologically advanced than its predecessor. But, more importantly,
it was realistic in its goal to give content providers and browser
developers a common, if dated, reference from which to work."


["Feel like I've been here before"
http://www.4waysite.com/songbooks/chords/DC/dejavu.htm]