Re: Towards consensus on document format

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
...
> Before you answer that, here is a list of consensus requirements on
> the document format:
>
> 1) Easy to generate
> 2) Readily supported by a wide range of authoring tools
WYSIWYG authoring, IMO, ought to be required if we're claiming to climb
out of the stone age (that's basically why I don't use XML, FWIW).

> 3) Conformance can be checked using automatic tools
> 4) Open specification, stable, non proprietary
> 5) Reversible, able to recover editing format from publication format
> 6) Longeivity, guarantee of being able to interpret them in 1000 years
> time assuming ability to read the physical format still exists
>
> Supporters of the teleprinter format add:
>
> 7) Looks like the teleprinter format
>
> Supporters of the HTML format add:
>
> 8) Ability to include useful diagrams and tables (ASCII art does not qualify)
HTML imports components that follow a variety of other standards (GIF?
BMP?); most of these are not true figures, but are rather renderings of
figures generated some other way.

Yes, figures would be nice to include, but "pictures" are not figures.
So which format are you proposing for this? SVG?

> 9) Ability to code names properly
> 10) Ability to write an intelligible document on internationalization issues
>
> Looking through the list, it is clear that HTML can meet every one of
> the consensus criteria. In most cases meeting it much better than the
> IETF format.
See above. HTML doesn't cut it for #8 (or at least isn't better than
ASCII without additional requirements).

A larger problem with HTML is that the formatting is not controllable.

I don't like - or want to every use - XML, but I don't understand the
argument that HTML is a better alternative.

Joe

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