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Re: Why Standards?

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Why Standards?
• From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 20:36:50 -0700
• In-reply-to: <20030519152736.GB12551@p...>
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Adam Turoff wrote:
>...
> 
> The one thing that *is* clear from Jim Waldo's piece is that premature
> standardization, like premature optimization, is an unnecessary evil in
> this business.

Fair enough. But when the standard comes too late, a proprietary "de 
jure" standard may have an unassailable position in the marketplace. If 
SVG had existed when Flash was invented the Web would be in a much 
better position than it is. Arguably, SVG came at just the right time 
technically to build on XML, namespaces, the DOM, etc. But the marketing 
message is now much more difficult (at least for the subset of its 
market that could conceivably be served by Flash). One could argue that 
it would have been better (given 20/20 hindsight and a goal of 
popularity) to release a technically weaker Web animation specification 
earlier.

That is not, of course, a criticism of anyone in the SVG world. Perhaps 
it will be better in the long term that they stressed technology rather 
than timing.

  Paul Prescod

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Why Standards?
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
  • Re: Why Standards?
    • From: David Megginson <david@m...>

• References:
  • Why Standards?
    • From: Jim Ancona <jim@a...>
  • Re: Why Standards?
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
  • Re: Why Standards?
    • From: Adam Turoff <ziggy@p...>

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