Starting On Topic (Rant)

This is mainly about Robert Burns's and Ian Hickson's replies to my thread 
about "Stephen Ferg's Table Research" [1]. Going off-topic is quite common 
in HTMLWG and can be useful in terms of community, so this is not a personal 
attack on them.

In this particular thread, I presented some specific research done by 
Stephen Ferg. The techniques from this are implemented on the US Department 
for Labor Statistics website. I brought this to the attention of HTMLWG in 
the hope of getting technical review. Perhaps there are things we could use 
in it.

What I got was a repetition of rhetoric and lengthy speculation which I've 
read in countless previous threads.

I was hoping for things like (but not limited to) the following:

* Comparing Ferg's workarounds to those found elsewhere to see if they are 
unique to one site or have become popular on other statistical websites.
* Testing the tables in current ATs to see if they are supported in 
present-day devices.
* Reviewing the techniques against the HTML4 specification prose to see 
whether they should work in present-day devices or whether it is stretching 
those semantics too far.
* Reviewing the techniques against the HTML5 draft to see if the current 
algorithm is sufficient without these workarounds and whether it still works 
when they are present.

In threads about technical issues I would prefer us to be more on-topic, 
please.

[1] 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Aug/thread.html#msg428>

--
Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
Collections of Interesting Data Tables
<http://sitesurgeon.co.uk/tables/readme.html> 

Received on Tuesday, 14 August 2007 14:55:17 UTC