RE: The Standards Manifesto - some Annotea comments

> robust way of doing it - it's a toy and has a poor UI - as I've said
many
> times today "I can't do UI".

> I feel guilty now that Annotea has been looked down upon based on my
> implementation, it was never serious, it's just my toy that normally

Oy!  I should have disclaimed that much better.  In fact, I was quite
impressed that someone had gotten an IE plugin working at all,
especially given the fact that most open-source developers despise
anything that Mom'n'pop use, and instead target arcane and "elite"
platforms and languages.  Another striking factor was that most open
source developers just assume it is impossible to extend IE since they
don't have source (and since Microsoft presumably is trying to lock
everyone out, etc.), so it was refreshing to see that someone actually
realized how simple it can be to add an extension.

I think the plugin is an admirable piece of work, and your submitting it
for others to look at and work with is even cooler.  Your plugin is
perhaps the *least* user-hostile element of the whole annotea project,
because it actually targets a browser that normal people use.  I was
just saying that overall, it is still not quite enough.  I don't think
you would claim that it was even *intended* to be a complete competitor,
so we were saying the same thing.

My comments were in response to Dan's question about "what would stop
annotea from gaining wide adoption."  My response could be summarized in
one sentence, "The annotea project seems to care more about the
technologies than the user benefits, and is not leveraging its semantic
web underpinnings in a way that provides a clear differentiating value
from other solutions, therefore it will struggle."

The main message I am trying to push is that publishing needs to be
separated from querying, just like it is on WWW.  I think I have gotten
that point across and it's best for me to stop now, since I really never
meant to disparage annotea or any of the plugins.

Received on Friday, 24 May 2002 17:38:53 UTC