Re: Adaption

On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 10:42:12AM +0100, Rotan Hanrahan wrote:

Warning: Rotan's MUA is broken.

> ###--- Hard to do one without doing the other. Personally I find adapting
> content to be more of a challenge, but I accept that manipulating the
> content without doing something with the style can lead to bad results.
> Interestingly, you can usually get away with manipulating the style
> without having to manipulate the content. Here's an example: for a small
> screen (or window, or viewport...) you can fit a big doc by using
> content collapsing. This can be done through style (i.e. making areas
> invisible until an event like a click or "mouse"-over). Alternatively,
> you can collapse by moving areas into separate pages that can be reached
> by clicking. The former is a style adaptation, the latter is content
> adaptation. I like to think of all the possibilities.

Yes, the style sheet is the key. It's like a debian package diff file.
So how about a policy to leave the original content intact? Discouraging
people from altering(e.g. removing) original content (in adaption) imo
is important!

> And this is a model that exists for real too. Which is a good starting
> point. But we don't plan to stay at the starting point, so let's see
> what else can be done. If you want to stay at the pure client-server
> model, then fine. It's also a valid instance, but not one I would
> prefer.

Ok, so can we please agree to start at the client server model, and
perhaps build to these more complex models? :)

> ###--- And we will. Now that we have a better understanding, we are
> working to create new solutions. Expect to see W3C Recommendations
> from the DIWG in this area. Also, "guidelines" is something that we
> have been thinking about. Something like: "how to author content so
> that it is suitable for device independence". Whether we assume the
> presence of adaptation, or expect the native markup to be ubiquitous is
> a matter for discussion. It's early days on this one...

Well, my thesis will also address this:
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/hendry/work/thesis/tktl/template.pdf
http://natalian.org/archives/2004/06/18/the-third-way/
This is work in progress and far from complete!

> ###--- Conformance and flexibility. Always a struggle. You are right,
> though. If the browsers permit sloppy markup, people will write sloppy
> markup. I would like a compromise where the browser displays an ugly
> warning at the top of the screen, yet continues to do its best to render
> the page. That way the customer doesn't fail to get the content, and
> the author is encouraged to fix the markup to get rid of the ugly

I can hardly call it a struggle. Conformance is extremely rare ! :)

This point features in my thesis. There are problems with this. First
there is no standard mechanism for a mobile user to email the web site
author about the details of the problem.  This is a problem area I think
W3C could help address.

Second, we might think browsers should display a warning. Great. But at
the end of the day this is never implemented. Try Mozilla with:
http://dabase.com/soup/soup4.xhtml for example. There are far too many
broken pages, and the user does not want to know about it.

Received on Friday, 9 July 2004 06:35:59 UTC