
The first ever web page - finm
https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/News/9201.html
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mikece
I presume I'm not alone in immediately looking at the source view and
wondering "How did HTML win as the document markup format? Wasn't there any
effective competition?"

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krapp
HTML and eventually the web came out of CERN and HTML was based on existing
SGML tools in use there for sharing research documents. There was no
"effective competition" because there was no market in which to compete.

HTML isn't beautiful but it's simple and effective enough that people were
able to write their own websites in the old days. What alternative would you
have suggested?

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mikece
Certainly not RTF... like you said, there didn't seem to be an alternative at
the time.

