RE: Rule of Least Power

The problem with that example is it contrives HTML to 
be a programming language.   It isn't.

Simple examples that do not obtain rob a principle 
of its surface credibility. The fact that a principle 
is easily misapplied may mean it is inadequately 
formulated or its application context isn't common. 
That means it begs its reason to be included among 
general principles.

As far as I can tell, this isn't a principle of 
the computer science of building web applications, 
but of politeness in a communicative context.  Again, 
Grice's Maxims are equally applicable and better argued.

len


From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of
noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com

I think it's easy to make the case that such pages would, at least in
those 
senses, be less valuable than pages with similar content conveyed in
HTML. 
 

This is a somewhat contrived example, in that few of us are tempted to 
build static pages entirely in JavaScript, but that's the point.  In
many 
cases, the Rule of Least Power brings you to solutions that have 
commonsense value.  I think that if one looks to such obvious examples
one 
may convince people that they are already acting on the Rule of Least 
Power.  If so, maybe they can start to understand how the Rule might
guide 
them toward useful decisions that they might not have made as well
without 
it.

Received on Tuesday, 7 March 2006 22:21:12 UTC