Re: [ACTION 897] Establish best current practice regarding withrawal of use of X- form

On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:21:35 +0100, Luca Passani <passani@eunet.no> wrote:

>
> Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>> On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:54:44 +0100, Luca Passani <passani@eunet.no>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Maybe everything would be solved in a more logical and coherent way if  
>>> the group accepted the viewpoint that transcoding is a "hack", no  
>>> matter how you look at it.
>>
>> Maybe, but I don't see any clear reason why one would accept that  
>> viewpoint - it is not self-evident to me, and if the group has not  
>> accepted it en masse already that suggests that it is really rather  
>> less than self-evident.
>
> No Charles. *It is* self evident.

Basing a definition on a notion of "ugliness" (as in your reply to Ray)  
makes it very difficult to make something self-evident. You have declared  
that something is decided by its possession of a quality whose measurement  
is notoriously subjective.

> The only reason why you are denying reality is that transcoder vendors  
> here have a commercial interest in using W3C as a selling tool for their  
> hacks.

I trust that I am simply misinterpreting this as you assserting that I am  
lying.

...
> Transcoding is a hack. A textbook example.

Transcoding, like any other browser, is taking content from the wire and  
providing a rendering to and end user or user agent. Like any other Web  
browser there is no a priori rule about how it should be rendered,  
although there are ill-defined conventions which are effectively based on  
attempts to converge in most cases or to provide something clearly more  
usable (hardly the sort of judgement that one might claim is self-evident  
in the general case).

For this reason, I do not consider transcoding per se to be a hack, let  
alone self-evidently so. I don't mind whether you think it is a hack or  
not, but I find it pointless to argue that the group should subscribe to  
your personal subjective understanding of ugliness as if that were  
self-evident fact.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com

Received on Tuesday, 3 February 2009 12:03:42 UTC