Much has been said in recent years regarding the imperative to
separate the concerns of presentation and content. Mechanisms of
presentation are subject to radical change, whether merely stylistic
or mandated by technological progression. The Hyper-Text Markup
Language that fulled the early days of the web revolution has been
reincarnated as XHTML. It is joined by its newborn cousin, RSS, in
heralding a new revolution that some have called Web 2.0.
Here at ibiblio, we take a more philosophical view regarding the
separation of presentation and content. We cannot dismiss the
importance of presentation as "mere style." The aesthetic perception
of an utterance is inextricably tied up with its semantics as well as
its rhetorical impact. As Marshal McLuhan famously said: the medium
is the message.
For these reasons, ibiblio is today announcing its intention to lobby
the W3C for the introduction of the BLiNG element to the XHTML standard:
Significantly, the BLiNG tag may be applied to images as well as text. Observe
these unique characteristics:
We are convinced that the introduction of this tag will usher in a new revolution, one so
profound it will be known to the historians of future generations as Web 2.1.
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