>we're trying to write desktop applications on top of browsers which were designed for navigating hypertext documents
I think that's a rather silly thing to say. You might as well say that computer games are doomed because we're trying to render complex scenes using hardware that was designed for simple calculations. Just about all successful technology comes about through an evolutionary process, building on older technology and morphing into new applications. When people notice this and say "this technology was originally designed for something else! It must be wrong, so let's reinvent it from scratch!" it usually doesn't end well.
> I think that's a rather silly thing to say. You might as well say that computer games are doomed because we're trying to render complex scenes using hardware that was designed for simple calculations.
We certainly aren't trying to render complex scenes using hardware designed in 1995. Browsers, on the other hand, have the same interaction model since 1995, but we're trying to use it for a totally different intent (static vs. interactive). I'm talking about user experience here.
> When people notice this and say "this technology was originally designed for something else! It must be wrong, so let's reinvent it from scratch!" it usually doesn't end well.
It's not about reinventing from scratch, it's about actually evolving the browser. It's semi-broken currently. Mobile made the problem even more apparent (show me a useable mobile web app).
Broken may not be the best description. People are managing to make it work just fine for the most part.
Unnecessary may be a better way to put it. What benefit do we really gain from doing all kinds of crazy DOM manipulations to return to what effectively amounts to a framebuffer and a few built-in drawing functions, emulating what we've been able to do on the raw hardware for decades?
"It exists" seems to be the best justification at this point. And that is a pretty strong justification, don't get me wrong. There is simply nothing better for on-demand distribution of network applications.
However, if we were to rebuild the model from scratch, I see no reason why we would want to include HTML as the basic building block. HTML rendering would more appropriately be an application built on top.
I think that's a rather silly thing to say. You might as well say that computer games are doomed because we're trying to render complex scenes using hardware that was designed for simple calculations. Just about all successful technology comes about through an evolutionary process, building on older technology and morphing into new applications. When people notice this and say "this technology was originally designed for something else! It must be wrong, so let's reinvent it from scratch!" it usually doesn't end well.