Re: [WICD] comments

On Tuesday 07 February 2006 12:17, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 12:10:12 +0100, Bert Bos <bert@w3.org> wrote:
> > But I don't believe you believe that yourself. WICD's goal is to
> > define the Web, or at least the Web browser, of tomorrow. When
> > tomorrow all browsers implement WICD and not MathML, what are you
> > going to say? "Sorry, it's just a profile, we didn't expect anybody
> > to take WICD seriously"?
>
> WICD as is stands now is about embedding (separate files), not about
> mixed namespace documents. MathML is clearly something you would want
> to have inline, which is out of scope for CDR on which WICD 1.0 is
> based.

That looks rather like an excuse, not an answer. You *do* include CSS 
and Javascript by inclusion. I claim math needs to be included in the 
format more than those two. (Mixing XML Namespaces is unrelated to this 
issue. MathML can, and should, be included without them.) There is an 
opportunity to include MathML now; changing applications later is much 
more difficult.

I don't need to include SVG, PNG, MP3 or anything else, only MathML. (I 
admit, CSS is rather convenient, too; but that's easy, because it was 
designed to be included).

In fact, I'd rather *not* include those other formats, even if it were 
possible. Transclusion is easier and more flexible. The content can be 
reused and I don't need to include SVG and PNG parsers in my HTML 
parser. I think the term generally used is that embedded content should 
be be a "first class object," which roughly means it has to have a URL.

There are very few cases where including one format in another is 
desirable. HTML in Atom is one. CSS in HTML is another (although many 
people contest even that). And MathML in HTML.

My advice: Forget about compound documents by inclusion, it is complex, 
contrary to the Web architecture and unnecessary(*). Just stick to 
compound documents by reference, but *with* MathML and CSS as integral 
parts of the syntax. In other words: develop a single WICD, which 
includes some things that make sense to include and transcludes the 
rest.(**)

(*) If you need everything in one file, there are solutions for that 
already: zip/jar, tar, multipart/related and MTOM. The latter is even a 
W3C Rec.

(**) The opposite of "CDR" (R for Reference) should be "CDC" (Copy). The 
opposite of "CDI" (Inclusion) would be "CDT" (Transclusion).



Bert


-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos                               W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Monday, 6 March 2006 13:52:38 UTC