
Ep #9: The Web Before Google: Liam Quin on HoTMetaL, XML, and the First Web Standards
From Rule-Breakers by PROPYLON
November 3, 2025 · 1h 12m
About this episode
Liam Quin discusses his journey in electronic publishing and the development of early web standards.
The latest episode of Rule-Breakers features Liam Quin a pioneering figure in the world of electronic publishing and generalized markup. In this conversation, we learn about Liam’s journey from a childhood fascination with typesetting that started with the fonts used in his copy of The Lord of the Rings, to a lifelong passion for digital documents that included working at the W3C on the XML standard. Liam and Sean explore the early days of structured content, the massive buzz that surrounded the emergence of the Web, the early Mosaic web browser, the world’s first HTML editor (HoTMetaL) and much more.
People in this episode
Guest: Liam Quin
Topics covered
- Web Standards
- XML
- HoTMetaL
- Electronic Publishing
- Digital Documents
Keywords
- typesetting
- Mosaic web browser
- HTML editor
Mentioned in this episode
Products: W3C, Mosaic, HoTMetaL, XML
Books & works: The Web Before Google, Rule-Breakers, The Lord of the Rings
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