I didn't have much involvment with HTML-WG either, but I didn't need
to in order to obtain a strong distaste for it.
And as to your claim that they weren't involved at all, I *think*
that's not correct. The HTML-WG archives appear to be off-line, so I
can't check my memories, but I do recall that Lou Montulli was at
least intermittently active on the mailing list. Also, tables were
implemented directly off then-current WG draft specs. (Yes, in an
ideal world, they wouldn't have been using drafts, but they weren't
*in* an ideal world, and nothing better was available).
Once again, I am *not* saying that Netscape did good, clean work; I
think they did a lousy job of specifying this stuff. But unlike some
people here, I don't think the blame is solely theirs...
> Netscapisms came about because the
> developers just assumed HTML+ was dead, rather than actually asking the
> author (Dave Raggett), and the Netscape developers believed they "created"
> the Web and therefore were in the best position to invent new HTML.
> SGML folks dominated the WG discussion because Spyglass was the only
> browser folk who bothered to show up. Netscape has no one but themselves
> to blame for that fiasco.
If the WG had, at some point, reached consensus on the features in
Dave's HTML+ spec, I'd understand the relevance of this. But I don't
believe they ever did (let alone early enough for it to be materially
relevant here).
rst