opening a text document to show a .txt file through a browserlink

[Cliff Wells]

On Mon, 2002-12-30 at 13:01, Erik Max Francis wrote:
> Cliff Wells wrote:
> 
> > And by extension, creating a program by using an IDE to draw dialog
> > boxes isn't programming either.  Still, it seems odd that a "program"
> > is
> > the end result ;)
> 
> But you're taking the analogy in the wrong direction.  HTML is a markup
> language, so it specifies markup; it doesn't specify programs.  The
> output of a Word session is a formatted document, and same is true with
> HTML.  The result is not a program.
> 
> The issue wasn't that using an IDE made it not a program, the issue was
> the inherent action that was taking place (marking up text) is what made
> it not programming.

The real issue is that no one has yet defined "programming" (unless I
missed it somewhere?).

I think that the term "programming" is rather vague to start with and
given advances in programming languages and techniques, subject to
change. Is SQL a programming language?  Not by some definitions, but it
shares many of the same features (triggers and cascading deletes being
analogous to event-driven programming).  What about Postscript?  I would
consider these, along with HTML, programming languages although
specialized for a specific task, i.e. they are not *general purpose*
programming languages.  

Consider GUI programming.  Basically layout.  When I do a dialog box in
wxPython, I use sizers and never *exactly* specify the layout of
anything, only relative positions.  Is that not programming?  Or is
anything to do with describing on-screen display of data merely
"markup"?  Granted, there is obviously going to be some "code" involved
for handling events and the like, but how is that different from a web
page calling a CGI script?

-- 
Cliff Wells, Software Engineer
Logiplex Corporation (www.logiplex.net)
(503) 978-6726 x308  (800) 735-0555 x308