- From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 13:48:29 +0300
- To: Robert Burns <rob@robburns.com>
- Cc: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>, "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>
On Jul 5, 2007, at 13:10, Robert Burns wrote: > I've said this again and again this will take a long-term solution > approach. In that time-frame authors may not even know what a text/ > html compatible serialization is? They won't be confused because > there might come a time when no one uses that serialization anymore. For that argument to hold water, you should present a plausible story of how we could get from the current configuration of the world to that imaginary configuration of the world (taking into account real incentives that influence how stakeholders act). So far actual experience suggests that getting from here to there doesn't just happen, which is pretty much why this WG exists to do the stuff that this WG is supposed to do. >> Is there any evidence that suggests that authors will start >> providing more meaningfull fallback when they can have more than >> just text? For instance, what do authors currently do for <object> >> when they use it for Flash or video or some such? > > I'm not a palm reader. I don't know the future. Is there any > evidence that the world wide web will exist next year? I know I > couldn't prove it will. If there's an existing facility for doing foo and authors don't use it, anyone who suggests adding a new facility for doing foo should present an extremely strong case why the difference between the old way of doing foo and the proposed new way of doing foo is the key to getting authors to do foo. > However, it should be a goal of ours to provide a language that > services the needs of authors. If evidence suggests that authors (en masse, not just a few outliers) don't use a given facility in an analogous situation, chances are that expanding the facility to another situation isn't actually servicing the real needs of authors. -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Received on Thursday, 5 July 2007 10:48:41 UTC