- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 00:32:48 +0000 (UTC)
- To: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Cc: www-style@w3.org
On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, David Woolley wrote: > > You can't. Most authors using CSS, even if they actually see the CSS > code, will never look at the specification. Of the remainder, most will > use it as a reference document and only look at specific sections when > they want clarification. Formal specifications are thought too technical > by most people using them; most people want cook books. Those that don't look at it at all aren't a problem. Those that look at only bits of it (and thus are guarenteed not to fully understand it) will always have problems, and no amount of trying to say everything in every paragraph will help them. > The only thing you can probably rely on is that someone on a commercial > browser development team will have read most of the parts that look like > they should be relevant, and that most of the people on an open source > development will have read some part of it. Having been directly involved in both commercial browser development teams, free software browser development teams, and teams that were a mixture of both simultaneously, I would say that in my experience there is absolutely no difference. Most implementors haven't read any of it until they are told by their QA people that they suck at which point they rely on the QA person to read the entire spec, and themselves only read the portions relevant to their work (the key parts I mentioned earlier). > The level of HTML compliance in authoring tools suggests that you can't > rely on their designers to read things thoroughly. Authoring tools probably don't have QA as familiar with the specifications as the browser teams. -- Ian Hickson )\._.,--....,'``. fL U+1047E /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. http://index.hixie.ch/ `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2004 19:32:51 UTC