Dave Raggett
Encyclopedia
Dave Raggett is a computer specialist who has played a major role in implementing the World Wide Web since 1992.
He has been a W3C Fellow at the World Wide Web Consortium
since 1995 and worked on many of the key web protocols, including HTTP
, HTML
, XHTML
, MathML
, XForms
, and VoiceXML
.
Raggett wrote HTML Tidy
, which is now a SourceForge
project. He lives in the West of England
.
Since late 2008, Raggett has been sponsored by JustSystems
to work on the Semantic Web
and XBRL
(eXtensible Business Reporting Language).
machines for use in schools. The following year, as a software developer in Hewlett-Packard's
Office Productivity Division, he worked on remote printing solutions.
Then, from 1985 to 2000, Raggett worked as a researcher at Hewlett-Packard
Labs in Bristol, England
, where he pursued a wide variety of projects including expert system
s, hypertext
, networking
, web browser
s and servers
, embedded system
s, interactive voice response systems
.
Since 1992, Raggett was involved in the development of the World Wide Web
after he met Tim Berners-Lee
.
In 1993, Raggett devoted his spare time to developing a web browser called Arena
on which he hoped to demonstrate new and future HTML specifications. Development of the browser was slow because Raggett was the lone developer and HP, which like many other computer corporations at the time, was unconvinced that the Internet would succeed and thus did not consider investing in web browser
development.
In Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor
, Tim Berners-Lee
wrote:
Raggett demonstrated the browser at the first World Wide Web Conference
in Geneva, Switzerland
in 1994 and the 1994 ISOC
conference in Prague
to show text flow around images, forms, and other aspects of HTML later termed as the HTML+ specification. Raggett subsequently partnered with CERN, to develop Arena further as a proof of concept
browser for this work. Using the Arena browser, Dave Raggett, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, Håkon Wium Lie
and others demonstrated text flow around a figure with captions, resizable tables, image backgrounds, HTML math, and other features.
In 1994,Raggett organized a birds of a feather (BOF)
on HTTP
, and went on to launch and chair the IETF
HTTP working group, as well as driving early standards work on HTML+, HTML 3.0, HTML tables and working with NCSA
on the design of HTML forms
.
Between 1995 and 1997, Raggett worked on an assignment at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts as part of his role as W3C Fellow.
In 1998, he organized the W3C workshop Shaping the Future of HTML.
From 2000 to 2003, Raggett worked at Openwave Systems as a technical manager for Openwave's involvement in World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C), and W3C Fellow (member of W3C staff). Openwave had experience with VoiceXML for unified messaging. They also planned to add mobile support for multimodal services, but had to refocus due to a downturn in telecoms spending by mobile operators.
In the next three years, he worked at Canon as a consultant working on driving the evolution of standards for multimodal interaction and other W3C technologies.
From 2006 to 2007, Raggett worked at Volantis as a Principal Researcher working on standards and related proof of concept implementations, focusing on standards work on the Ubiquitous Web.
The term VRML
was coined by Dave Raggett in a paper submitted to the First World Wide Web Conference
in 1994, and first discussed at the WWW94 VRML BOF established by Tim Berners-Lee
, where Mark Pesce
presented the Labyrinth demo he developed with Tony Parisi
and Peter Kennard
.
He has been a W3C Fellow at the World Wide Web Consortium
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
since 1995 and worked on many of the key web protocols, including HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
, HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
, XHTML
XHTML
XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
, MathML
MathML
Mathematical Markup Language is an application of XML for describing mathematical notations and capturing both its structure and content. It aims at integrating mathematical formulae into World Wide Web pages and other documents...
, XForms
XForms
XForms is an XML format for the specification of a data processing model for XML data and user interface for the XML data, such as web forms...
, and VoiceXML
VoiceXML
VoiceXML is the W3C's standard XML format for specifying interactive voice dialogues between a human and a computer. It allows voice applications to be developed and deployed in an analogous way to HTML for visual applications. Just as HTML documents are interpreted by a visual web browser,...
.
Raggett wrote HTML Tidy
HTML Tidy
HTML Tidy is a computer program and a library whose purpose is to fix invalid HTML and to improve the layout and indent style of the resulting markup....
, which is now a SourceForge
SourceForge
SourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...
project. He lives in the West of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
Since late 2008, Raggett has been sponsored by JustSystems
JustSystems
is a major Japanese software development house. The company is also known as "JustSystem." Its main products are Ichitaro , a word processor, and Hanako, a graphics package that remains competitive in the Japanese market, despite strong and controversial competitive pressures from Microsoft in the...
to work on the Semantic Web
Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
and XBRL
XBRL
XBRL is a freely available, market-driven, open, and global standard for exchanging business information. XBRL allows information modeling and the expression of semantic meaning commonly required in business reporting. XBRL is XML-based...
(eXtensible Business Reporting Language).
Career
From 1981 to 1984, Dave Raggett worked at Research Machines designing and developing software for local networking of Z80Zilog Z80
The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...
machines for use in schools. The following year, as a software developer in Hewlett-Packard's
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
Office Productivity Division, he worked on remote printing solutions.
Then, from 1985 to 2000, Raggett worked as a researcher at Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
Labs in Bristol, England
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, where he pursued a wide variety of projects including expert system
Expert system
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in...
s, hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
, networking
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
, web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
s and servers
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
, embedded system
Embedded system
An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...
s, interactive voice response systems
Interactive voice response
Interactive voice response is a technology that allows a computer to interact with humans through the use of voice and DTMF keypad inputs....
.
Since 1992, Raggett was involved in the development of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
after he met Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...
.
In 1993, Raggett devoted his spare time to developing a web browser called Arena
Arena (web browser)
The Arena browser was an early testbed web browser and web authoring tool for Unix. Originally authored by Dave Raggett in 1993, the browser continued its development at CERN and the World Wide Web Consortium and subsequently by Yggdrasil Computing...
on which he hoped to demonstrate new and future HTML specifications. Development of the browser was slow because Raggett was the lone developer and HP, which like many other computer corporations at the time, was unconvinced that the Internet would succeed and thus did not consider investing in web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
development.
In Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor
Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor
Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor is a book written by Tim Berners-Lee describing how the world wide web was created and his role in it. It is the only book written by Berners-Lee....
, Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...
wrote:
One of the few commercial developers to join the contest was Dave Raggett at Hewlett-Packard in Bristol, England. He created a browser called Arena. HP had a convention that an employee could engage in related, useful, but not official work for 10 percent of his or her job time. Dave spent his 10 percent time, plus a lot of evenings and weekends, on Arena. He was convinced that hypertext Web pages could be much more exciting, like magazine pages rather than textbook pages, and that HTML could be used to position not just text on a page but pictures, tables, and other features. He used Arena to demonstrate all these things, and to experiment with different ways of reading and interpreting both valid and incorrectly written HTML pages.
Raggett demonstrated the browser at the first World Wide Web Conference
World Wide Web Conference 1
The first World Wide Web Conference which was organized by Robert Cailliau was held at Geneva, Switzerland from May 25 to May 27 in 1994 and was hosted by CERN....
in Geneva, Switzerland
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
in 1994 and the 1994 ISOC
Internet Society
The Internet Society or ISOC is an international, nonprofit organization founded during 1992 to provide direction in Internet related standards, education, and policy...
conference in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
to show text flow around images, forms, and other aspects of HTML later termed as the HTML+ specification. Raggett subsequently partnered with CERN, to develop Arena further as a proof of concept
Proof of concept
A proof of concept or a proof of principle is a realization of a certain method or idea to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle, whose purpose is to verify that some concept or theory that has the potential of being used...
browser for this work. Using the Arena browser, Dave Raggett, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, Håkon Wium Lie
Håkon Wium Lie
Håkon Wium Lie is a web pioneer, a standards activist, and, , the Chief Technology Officer of Opera Software.He is best known for proposing the concept of Cascading Style Sheets while working with Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN in 1994. As an employee at W3C, he developed CSS into a...
and others demonstrated text flow around a figure with captions, resizable tables, image backgrounds, HTML math, and other features.
- 25–27 May 1994 Raggett demonstrated the browser at the first World Wide Web ConferenceWorld Wide Web Conference 1The first World Wide Web Conference which was organized by Robert Cailliau was held at Geneva, Switzerland from May 25 to May 27 in 1994 and was hosted by CERN....
in Geneva, SwitzerlandGenevaGeneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland... - 13–17 June 1994 ISOCInternet SocietyThe Internet Society or ISOC is an international, nonprofit organization founded during 1992 to provide direction in Internet related standards, education, and policy...
conference in PraguePraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
In 1994,Raggett organized a birds of a feather (BOF)
Birds of a Feather (computing)
In computing, BoF can refer to:* An informal discussion group. Unlike special interest groups or working groups, BoFs are informal and often formed in an ad-hoc manner...
on HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
, and went on to launch and chair the IETF
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite...
HTTP working group, as well as driving early standards work on HTML+, HTML 3.0, HTML tables and working with NCSA
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but it provides high-performance...
on the design of HTML forms
Form (web)
A webform on a web page allows a user to enter data that is sent to a server for processing. Webforms resemble paper or database forms because internet users fill out the forms using checkboxes, radio buttons, or text fields...
.
Between 1995 and 1997, Raggett worked on an assignment at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts as part of his role as W3C Fellow.
In 1998, he organized the W3C workshop Shaping the Future of HTML.
From 2000 to 2003, Raggett worked at Openwave Systems as a technical manager for Openwave's involvement in World Wide Web Consortium
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
(W3C), and W3C Fellow (member of W3C staff). Openwave had experience with VoiceXML for unified messaging. They also planned to add mobile support for multimodal services, but had to refocus due to a downturn in telecoms spending by mobile operators.
In the next three years, he worked at Canon as a consultant working on driving the evolution of standards for multimodal interaction and other W3C technologies.
From 2006 to 2007, Raggett worked at Volantis as a Principal Researcher working on standards and related proof of concept implementations, focusing on standards work on the Ubiquitous Web.
The term VRML
VRML
VRML is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional interactive vector graphics, designed particularly with the World Wide Web in mind...
was coined by Dave Raggett in a paper submitted to the First World Wide Web Conference
World Wide Web Conference 1
The first World Wide Web Conference which was organized by Robert Cailliau was held at Geneva, Switzerland from May 25 to May 27 in 1994 and was hosted by CERN....
in 1994, and first discussed at the WWW94 VRML BOF established by Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...
, where Mark Pesce
Mark Pesce
- Biography :September 1980, Pesce attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology , for a Bachelor of Science degree, but left in June 1982 to pursue opportunities in the newly emerging high-technology industry. He worked as an Engineer for the next few years, developing prototype firmware and...
presented the Labyrinth demo he developed with Tony Parisi
Tony Parisi (software developer)
Tony Parisi, one of the early pioneers in Virtual Reality is a researcher and developer of 3D computer software. The co-creator of Virtual Reality Modeling Language , has authored books and papers on the future of technology. He currently works on X3D....
and Peter Kennard
Peter Kennard
Peter Kennard is a London born and based photomontage artist and senior tutor in photography at the Royal College of Art. Seeking to reflect his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement, he turned from painting to photomontage to better address his political views...
.
Specifications/Protocols
Specifications and protocols written and developed by Raggett include:- XFormsXFormsXForms is an XML format for the specification of a data processing model for XML data and user interface for the XML data, such as web forms...
- HTML 2.0/+/3.0/4.01
- XBRLXBRLXBRL is a freely available, market-driven, open, and global standard for exchanging business information. XBRL allows information modeling and the expression of semantic meaning commonly required in business reporting. XBRL is XML-based...
Publications
- "HTML 3", published in 1996 by Addison Wesley
- "Raggett on HTML 4", published in 1998 by Addison Wesley
- "Beginning XHTML", published in 2000 by Wrox press
- "XHTML example by example", published 2002 by Prentice-Hall