RE: Doctypes and the dialects of HTML 5

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> It doesn't matter who's problem it is, it only matters
> what the problem is.  I do not understand what the issue
> is and why versioning is being requested, and I do not
> understand the intent of your solution.  If you do not
> know what the problem is, how can you possibly have a
> solution for it?
> 
> It think it's important for everyone, particularly those
> with less experience in developing and contributing to
> specs, to learn and understand the difference between a
> solutions, use cases and problems. Before any solution
> can be developed or proposed, we need to clearly define
> what the use cases are and problems are.
> 
> Without knowing and understand the problem and use cases
> to be solved, a successful solution cannot be developed;
> and a solution looking for a problem isn't really a
> solution at all.

While your reply was actually very helpful to me, I'd like to bring up a
point. The approach you describe is evidently a good and proper approach
taken by very seasoned standards professionals. 

However, my understanding was that the W3C wanted to open this up to people
using HTML in the real world in order to get better perspective on issues.
The approach of requiring a well defined use-case prior to discussion very
much discourages brainstorming. I believe that if you attack every idea with
a rigid methodology even before is can be discussed it will have a chilling
effect on discussion and it will stifle innovation.  

On the other hand, if I misunderstood the intent of the W3C opening up the
debate to "ordinary web developers" then forgive me for misunderstanding.

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org
http://atlanta-web.org - http://t.oolicio.us

Received on Sunday, 25 March 2007 23:01:23 UTC