- From: Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>
- Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 16:04:10 -0400
- To: <XML-uri@w3.org>
At 09:46 PM 6/8/00 +0200, Julian Reschke wrote: >Joe Kesselman wrote: >> > Labeling the documents as "experimental" sure would make this easier >> > to accept. >> >> As I understand it, this is part of why the W3C publishes only >> Recommendations, not Standards. You shouldn't call something a standard >> until it has been widely adopted by the industry and has been used long >> enough that you really believe it's stable. Viewed that way, the >> entire web >> is still in glorified beta-test mode. >> >> But this distinction has been generally ignored in the mad rush to get >> products onto the market and capture eBusiness mindshare. > >Maybe it's ignored because this is where the W3C ends? For all practical >purposes people identify W3C recommendations with standards. Yep - the Web Standards Project, for instance. The only place I've heard the distinction between 'Recommendation' and 'Standard' expressed strongly is from the ISO/SGML folks, who used to remind everyone of the difference all the time. They seem to have calmed down lately, though. The IETF approach is interesting as well - I like the multi-track approach, where it's fine for some documents to be informational even after a few thousand people-years. Simon St.Laurent XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed. Building XML Applications Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth http://www.simonstl.com
Received on Thursday, 8 June 2000 16:01:50 UTC