[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: How do you determine success?
Ann Navarro wrote: > > At 03:55 PM 8/29/99 -0400, David Megginson wrote: > >Ann Navarro writes: > > > > > Did HTML 4.0 -- with it's three versions, fail from overcomplexity? Calling three DTDs, differing at the high level by definition of less than a handful of parameter entities, "versions" is a huge stretch. One that's at the heart of this discussion. Really, HTML 4 is one language, with DTDs defining three subsets. The inclusive subset is by far the most popular one. > >Sorry to be harsh, but ... > > Is that not, then, a failure of the user agent and not the spec? Specifications need debugging just as much as code. Writing code to a spec with deep flaws -- such as overcomplexity, or premature publication -- is a huge problem. As someone who's both written specs and coded to them, I think the HTML 4.0 issues are tied more to the spec than to those user agents. How does one debug a specification? And importantly, WHEN does it get debugged ... before the spec is final, or after? I've seen it work best the IETF way, debugging _before_ concrete gets cast. The Internet protocol stack gives us global connnectivity, and with very few problems. The W3C way, examplified by a huge HTML 4 spec that's not widely enough implemented to depend on, hasn't. (We know that the XML spec was rather atypical in the W3C processes.) It's curious to realize that XML, published as a REC not two months after HTML 4.0, actually has MANY conformant implementations available, today. Simplicity is one its most significant virtues. Most folk would agree that HTML 4.0 doesn't have _one_ such implementation. Complexity is one of its most significant flaws. - Dave xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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