In my experience, the proper way to develop standards is to begin with a private
implementation. Only with practical experience can sufficient understanding be
achieved to
enable the writing of a good standard. Nearly all prevalent standards have
followed this
course, including HTML. An example of writing the standard first is OSI.
Jony
-----Original Message-----
From: www-html-request(_at_)w3(_dot_)org
[mailto:www-html-request(_at_)w3(_dot_)org]On Behalf Of
Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 11:47 PM
To: James P. Salsman
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; www-forms(_at_)w3(_dot_)org;
www-html(_at_)w3(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: HTML forms
On Thu, 30 Mar 2000 13:03:07 PST, "James P. Salsman" said:
is assured on almost all controversial matters. The W3C,
however, constrains meaningful debate to those willing and able
to pay US$50,000 per year. I agree that there was a point in
the early development of web standards when that constraint was
beneficial. Now, however, with Netscape owned by a company
Why was it beneficial then?
shipping MSIE, and the stagnation or regression of the core HTML
standards, along with the concerns raised in Norman Solomon's
article, I believe the time has come to return certain aspects
And why is it non-beneficial now, given the apparent complexity of
getting a product shipped (look at the current state of Mozilla)?
Let's face it - anybody who intends to ship a working browser will
need to have enough programmers that the $50K is the least of the problems.
Yes, this cuts Mozilla out unless somebody pays for their membership. On
the other hand, are there any other *real* contenders for whom $50K would
be a hardship?
of the control of HTML to the IETF. Even if that view is not
shared by the IETF, I the only way I would not be certain that
a debate on the topic would be healthy for the Internet communty
would be if the W3C were to take an affirmative stand on issues
involving microphone upload for language instruction and
asyncronous audio conferencing.
Umm.. Microphone upload is the *least* of the many challenges facing
HTML at the current time.
--
Valdis Kletnieks
Operating Systems Analyst
Virginia Tech