[qubex]

• Because one was proprietary, the other was not.

• Because one was top heavy, the other was not.

• Because one was a document format shared between an application that creates ne one that displays, the other was a whole server/protocol/client stack.

• Because one would insist on rigidly paginating it’s content as output by the generating application, while the other defined content that would be streamed to your client and allow it to adapt the content to your display and reflow it’s (admittedly primitive-looking) text & cetera.

• Because one was designed for use within corporations to distribute documents, while the other was intended to allow collective authorship beyond corporate confines and that this consumer/researcher technology would later seep back into the corporate domain and possibly screw up their plans.

Another way to look at it: if the Adobe folks were angsty, irritable, annoyed, or otherwise flustered, it’s probably because they knew (some?) of the above (and perhaps more) and realised that they were going to have a fight on their hands.

[saagarjha]

HyperCard did some of those things!