Re: the 4 colour theorem, and an alternative to the current list of guidelines.

At 11:21 PM 8/19/2001 , Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:
>The list is endless, and I strongly recommend offering an
>alternative to the current 'dry' list of guidelines.

This may be a place where we need to suggest that people create
a wide variety of alternatives -- because basically we _are_ chartered
to create a dry list of guidelines, something which can be issued as
a W3C Recommendation.  Once that core deliverable is met, though, it
can serve as the base content which can then be presented in alternate
form and interpretations.

One of the big challenges here, though, is naming certain exact phrasings
as "normative" and thus, apparently, the _only_ normative formulations
of certain words which are allowable.  This makes it harder to create
"rewordings" which don't also feel an obligation to include whatever
pedantically precise phrasing we've created.

In other words, it leads to constructions of the type:

      This is what they said: ...
      This is what it really means: ...
      This is what you should do: ...

I've seen it in my own work (both for public distribution and internal)
and I suspect we'll see more of it, e.g. in Joe Clark's book.

I'm not convinced this is desirable -- but I don't know if there's
any way around it based on our current approaches.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Reef North America
Accessibility - W3C - Integrator Network
Tel +1 949-567-7006
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Received on Monday, 20 August 2001 02:57:56 UTC