Is HTML a form of desktop publishing?
The short answer is no BUT… HTML was created as a subset of SGML, a more general markup language. It (HTML) was designed to be essentially a logical description of some content with tags giving hints about how the content should be rendered on a WIDE variety of platforms. The intent was that titles, images, various levels of headers, blocks of formatted and unformatted text, lists, etc. would be indicated by tags to let the browser display things appropriately on the user’s platform. Search engines and indexing programs could also make use of the tags to help do their work. Lately, though, HTML authors have been demanding more control over how their pages are presented and Netscape, Microsoft and other browsers have given it to them. The HTML 3.2 standards also show a move in this direction. Now HTML authors have something to say about image placement, bullet style, backgrounds, centering of various kinds of content, etc. It is very unlikely that any of these changes will be repealed
