- From: ryan <ryan@theryanking.com>
- Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:07:34 -0700
- To: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Cc: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>, Henrik Dvergsdal <henrik.dvergsdal@hibo.no>, public-html@w3.org
On Apr 11, 2007, at 8:24 AM, Dan Connolly wrote: > There is a natural tension between writing the sort of precise, > exhaustive specification that meets the needs of implementors, > and writing for the audience of authors, who mostly need a bunch > of examples to copy from and a bit of explanatory material. > > When we developed OWL, the Web Ontology Language > (http://www.w3.org/2004/OWL/ ), we had enough > writing resources to explain the language from 5 different > perspectives: > Overview > Use Cases and Requirements > Guide > Reference > Abstract Syntax and Semantics > Test Cases I don't think comparing HTML and OWL is very useful here. When you were working on OWL , (AFAICT) it was a new technology that no one had authored before. With HTML, we have a very different situation, we have thousands or millions of authors, hundreds of guides, entire sites dedicated to tutorials and instructional material, college level courses, etc., etc. People know how to author HTML as implemented. What we lack is a specification for how to implement HTML user agents that is unambiguous, rigorous, complete and has a test suite. I don't think this WG needs to worry about educating authors, instead it should focus, at least in the near term on bridging the divide between HTML "as specified" (HTML4) and HTML "as implemented" (which is what HTML5 is designed to do). Just to be clear, I completely support the proposal that started this thread. -ryan
Received on Wednesday, 11 April 2007 19:02:56 UTC