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Re: Towards consensus on document format

2010-03-15 16:09:04
Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

Before you answer that, here is a list of consensus requirements on
the document format:

The fundamental consensus requirement is that the document format MUST
be widely (and internationally) legible.

The internationalization requirement automatically excludes non-ASCII
characters.

Pure ASCII HTML may (or may not) be widely legible. However,

2) Readily supported by a wide range of authoring tools
3) Conformance can be checked using automatic tools
4) Open specification, stable, non proprietary

HTML is already too complex and unstable that there is no hope that
some IETF-specific profiling can be widely and stably supported.

5) Reversible, able to recover editing format from publication format

Reversibility does not help if an editor can not recognize (nor input)
some character, which also requires pure ASCII.

6) Longeivity, guarantee of being able to interpret them in 1000 years

Then, we should use a format available at least 500 years ago.

Were you using HTML 500 years ago?

                                                        Masataka Ohta


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