[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] WG's responding to XML-DEV (was Re: What is wrong with SVG?)
----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Murray-Rust" <peter@u...> To: "'XML-DEV (E-mail)'" <xml-dev@x...> Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2000 6:23 PM Subject: RE: What is wrong with SVG? > > In the present case there is probably no real point in discussing the > details of SVG *on XML-DEV*. WGs will not normally take notice, unless > there is so much clamour in the commons that it seems politic. There may be > a point in discussing some issues that are generic or cross more than one > spec. So if a number of W3C specs had attribute values or content that > require microparsing it could be useful to raise it here. It is unlikely > that there would be a direct response. IMHO it is very unfortunate that most WG's take little public notice of XML-DEV comments until there is "much clamour in the commons". FWIW, the DOM WG kept rather close watch of the public mailing list and XML-DEV when the details of the Level 1 spec were being hammered out two years ago, and continues to give very quick and detailed responses on the public list for Level 2. I believe that our public debates (I especially remember tangling with Don Park and Steven Savitsky) helped clarify things greatly. For example, while I was mad at the time that that we dropped the NodeIterator interface from Level 1 because of all the difficulty in explaining it to the public, it's clear in retrospect that this needed much more "cooking" to get right. The counter-argument seems to be that WG members have little time for this task, and a more optimal use of limited resources is to simply consider public comments behind closed doors. (I must confess that for various reasons I had nearly full-time to devote to the DOM during the period I was editing the Level 1 DOM spec, so I *did* have spare bandwidth to devote to XML-DEV). Nevertheless I believe that W3C participants *have* to find the time, or cut back their objectives to make the time. For one thing, people are discouraged from writing closely reasoned critiques if they fall down a black hole until the "disposition of comments" when the spec is finalized months later. A genuine debate motivates everyone to have their facts and logic straight rather than just wielding the flamethrower. Also, given the relative costs of fixing software problems in the field vs fixing them at design time, the W3C and its members should have a very strong incentive to encourage detailed critiques before Last Call, by which time only "showstopper" problems have a prayer of being fixed. I don't follow SVG closely, but I would encourage people to debate the "subelements vs microparsing" issue publicly, marshall whatever evidence can be obtained on each side, and make SURE that the WG responds if it appears that they are on the wrong track here. SVG is far too critical to the Web to allow it to be suboptimal. Likewise if the inefficiency of the DOM is part of the problem here, that should be addressed (perhaps with a hybrid push/pull model or a "flyweight" mini-Node), not force people to kludge around it. The only practical way to figure out whether the SVG and/or DOM specs need to be improved is for *lots* of people to analyze and critique them, and the XML-DEV subscribers are probably the only semi-organized group in the world qualified to do so. *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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