- From: Shawn Medero <soypunk@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 10:34:45 -0500
- To: "Dean Edridge" <dean@55.co.nz>
- Cc: public-html@w3.org
On 12/19/07, Dean Edridge <dean@55.co.nz> wrote: > If there are any genuine reasons why both serialisations can't be > supported by all user-agents I'd like to hear them. This is all I am asking... when putting together an issue in the HTML WG Tracker, I need to collect data that presents as much info about the pros & cons. I'm not in a position to make proposals, my experience with HTML & XHTML involves authoring, parsing, and info retrieval against large data sets... I've not written any aspect of a general user-agent implementation to date and have no plans to. On the other hand, I'm familiar enough with the concepts that I've volunteered to collect, refine, and track issues for the working group. With that in mind, I can think of two use cases that are sorta linked: 1. Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets 2. HTML editing software Apple wanted HTML desktop widgets but didn't want to get into of the business of XML. If I had to guess, they did this because: 1. Authors generally know how to write HTML but not XML 2. HTML editing software that has to understand but HTML and XML is more complex to write, test, and support. To suggest that support both HTML and XHTML is no big deal underplays the problems with things like serialization and namespaces. These seem like valid concerns with the benefit that Dashboard is more stable for OS X users and Dashboard widgets are easier to write for Apple's many 3rd party developers. I'll leave the exercise of vetting these details to people much smarter than myself. <rant> A general meta-reflection about raising issues on the mailing list: I really wish people would somewhat extract themselves from the issues (It is impossible to be entirely emotionally detached from them, we are human after all.)... when someone asks for more info ... it is not a personal attack against you or your beliefs. The majority of specification change request come with too little information to be actionable. (I don't expect this to ... nor is it clear that it should... change.) So the discussion has to start on the mailing list, irc, etc to fill in all the gaps. I think it is great that you are passionate about your areas of interest Dean, without that spirit this (and other) specification would go nowhere. I'd just like to see cooler heads prevail in most cases. (In fact, I may be overreacting as response to the unnecessary blow up over the <video> container & codec issues...) When wearing my own working group hat (actually, all I have a t-shirt from Boston), I'm doing my best to stay impartial and document information using reason and logic If I ask you (or anyone) to clarify something, I'm not challenging your ideals of "one web" - I'm potentially trying to strengthen your case. It just may happen that the results have the opposite effect of weaken it too... I don't have any vested interest in either outcome. I'm not employed by any major browser vendor, accessibility software maker, large internet company, etc... I just want to see the best outcome for the web in the spirit of something like Dan Connolly's story about <video> and his family: http://www.w3.org/QA/2007/12/when_will_html_5_support_soone.html </rant> Shawn
Received on Wednesday, 19 December 2007 15:34:57 UTC