use of html now acceptable ?

[cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org]

> I notice the use of html emoticons (i.e. smileys etc) creeping into
> technical discussion lists. Is this now considered good form?

Hum?

I don't see emoticons in the HTML DTD, whether for 3.2 or 4.0, and don't
ever recall them being in any way associated with HTML.

According to the Hackers' Dictionary...

  It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman on the
  CMU bboard systems sometime between early 1981 and mid-1982. He later
  wrote: "I wish I had saved the original post, or at least recorded the
  date for posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something
  that would soon pollute all the world's communication channels." [GLS
  confirms that he remembers this original posting].

That appears to predate HTML by a goodly 8 years.

And if we look at Fahlman's biography, the "creeping" surely looks like
it took place a while ago, and not by some clueless "HTML weenie."

  "In addition to my AI research, I have worked on tools for
  incremental, exploratory development of complex software systems. I
  was one of the principal designers of the Common Lisp language. My
  research group developed the widely used CMU Common Lisp
  implementation, which set a new standard for Lisp performance.  After
  that, we worked on innovative software development environments for
  Dylan and Java.  I am also interested in the use of AI techniques to
  build better user interfaces, especially for loose collections of
  pervasive computing devices."

If a "principal designer" of Common Lisp cannot be considered
"technical," I'm not sure who conceivably can be.
--
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="acm.org" in name ^ "@" ^ tld;;
http://cbbrowne.com/info/rdbms.html
"As  I've gained  more  experience with  Perl  it strikes  me that  it
resembles Lisp in many ways, albeit Lisp as channeled by an awk script
on acid."  -- Tim Moore (on comp.lang.lisp)
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