> A modern web browser is more like a VM. But instead of having some > sort of sane rendering backend it uses HTML/CSS. Javascript/plugins > serve as the "userspace" code, if you will. HTTP exports the local > rendering interface and cpu to remote machines.
I haven't looked at any implementation of an HTML rendering engine, so I may be totally off the mark, but presumably there is merit in the ability to take a textual source and turn it into a two-dimensional graphical representation of the intended document? Now, HTML may be a poor realisation of the language such a rendering engine would interpret, but it must be possible to design a mark-up language (and let's not let "mark-up" or "language" condition our thinking) that can be used as the human-editable source for a graphical production. I don't suggest that there is a "perfect" such notation, merely that we have had enough experience with word processors (a long list), text processors (TeX, troff, etc.) and page layout languages (Postscript, are there any other interesting ones?) to be able to explore the next generation, together with the tools they would need to manipulate them. Given a rendering engine with a powerful and hopefully flexible input language, one may be able to write compilers or interpreters for the more popular brands. Or am I missing the wood for the trees? If I'm not, I propose that Plan 9 could provide the platform for such an engine as well as for the various interpreters. Designing a useful graphical description language is no small project, but surely there is some prior art out there than one can draw on? ++L
