[GeneralMaximus]

There is no difference between a "document" and an "app". There has never been a difference between the two, it's a purely artificial distinction.

Word and LibreOffice "documents" can run embedded macros. Emacs has `org-mode`, which can call out to any programming language on your $PATH. A PDF document is produced by running code in a stack-based virtual machine. Even fonts have bytecode instructions embedded inside them that are used for hinting.

If by "document" you mean "static text with no executable bits", then only plain text files can truly be called documents. Everything else is a computer program, and has been since the dawn of computing.

[muyuu]

the loose implication is that documents don't have access to resources outside of itself and they're somewhat static

imo when you start talking about dynamic documents the distinction starts to blur but it should be fine if it's just a few parameters that are meant to be manually updated... beyond that "document" seems like the wrong term (and tech)

those artificial distinctions are essential and perfectly practical as they can convey expectations just fine

GP is correct in that the browser has generalised to a point it has clear drawbacks for its original intended purpose, but that is just a fact of life at this point

IMO, html should have scaled back from 5.0 to the feature-set of 4, if not 3, with mass deprecations and beyond that it shouldn't be called html even if the main browsers carried on adding features and interoperable OS-like characteristics, so people could see beforehand if they were visiting hypertext documents or application sites, because certainly most of the web right now could not be reasonably called "hypertext"

but that isn't the way it was handled and tbh it was to be expected

[wolvesechoes]

> There is no difference between a "document" and an "app". There has never been a difference between the two, it's a purely artificial distinction.

Every distinction is artificial if you are willing to hair-split. No useful conclusion follows from this realization.

[incrudible]

I don’t think the total dissolution of a blurry boundary is a useful act. Yes, many document formats become Turing complete and run Doom eventually, but there is still a notable practical distinction between the intent to create a document interpreter versus an application framework.