Published at LXer:

It's easy to appreciate the wonders of the Web, and all of the riches that the Internet brings into our lives. All of which makes it easy indeed not to notice the things that tend to slip away, as the collateral damage of progress. Recently, we woke up to the fact that if we don't care about document formats, our personal and public documents may disappear into a digital Black Hole of no return. Documents aren't the only thing that may disappear, though, as we place higher and higher priorities on fast loading speeds and easy formatting. If that's all we care about, then the aesthetics of the printed word and its visual presentation will disappear forever as well. That doesn't have to happen. All we have to do is be sure we include the right criteria when we create standards for the digital books and browsers of the future. But who will enter the technical world of bits and bytes to defend the Arts of the Book?

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