- From: Robert Burns <rob@robburns.com>
- Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:39:07 -0500
- To: Magnus Kristiansen <magnusrk+elektrans@pvv.org>
- Cc: "Lachlan Hunt" <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>, public-html <public-html@w3.org>
Hello all, I've already written some about the cowpath principle in response to the questionnaire. However, I thought I'd respond to some of the issues raised since then. I think that the cowpath principle, like many of the principles currently has the wrong elaboration. That is it elaborates a principle that has little to do with its title. Lachlan suggested some new language for the principle and I'd like to take that further by suggesting some more changes. Current wording "When a practice is already widespread among authors, consider adopting it rather than forbidding it or inventing something new. Authors already use the <br/> syntax as opposed to <br> in HTML and there is no harm done by allowing that to be used." Lachlan's wording "Investigate existing practices and design or adopt| features that meet the desires of authors. Where possible, solutions should leverage the existing techniques and skill sets of authors which will help promote the adoption of new features." My suggestion: "Investigate existing designs and practices to identify the needs of authors and users and design features that meet those needs." As that is reworded I think it is much better than the current draft. In particular it takes into account the needs of users as well as authors. Also it promotes cow paths as a mechanism to identify those needs and not necessarily to adopt the practices identified. The second sentence belongs more in the principle "Evolution, not revolution": "Where possible, solutions should leverage the existing techniques and skill sets of authors which will help promote the adoption of new features." By focussing on both authors and users (two of our primary constituencies), this makes for a better design principle. Also it is a design principle that is less likely to be misunderstood and lead to a misguided application of the principle. For example, the HTML5 draft was recently changed to say: "A key part of the content that has no textual alternative In certain rare cases, the image is simply a critical part of the content, and there is no alternative text available. This could be the case, for instance, in a photo gallery, where a user has uploaded 3000 photos from a vacation trip, without providing any descriptions of the images. The images are the whole point of the pages containing them. In such cases, the alt attribute must be omitted." This proposed change to the draft was guided by the sorts of mis- application of the pave the cowpaths principle that I am worried about (and I've heard others express concerns over). Here the draft identifies a common practice of omitting alt text. And I would add this is a difficult situation for authors to meet the HTML 4.01 recommendation. However, while it may pave a cowpath to turn that unfortunate situation into the norm, "In such cases, the alt attribute must be omitted.", that is not the kind of cowpath we want to pave (most of us I think). The question then becomes how should the HTML5 recommendation address this issue. I'm not going to address that here, but in this case the pave the cowpath principle should not be the one that comes to mind. There are many ways to address it than requiring authors to do what they already do (in violation of the last recommendation). Take care, Rob
Received on Thursday, 23 August 2007 00:39:20 UTC