Re: Microsoft's involvement in the WG

Lachlan Hunt wrote, quote:
> We have a much better chance of getting Microsoft to improve 
> IE by working with them, rather than excluding them based on 
> past performance and personal opinions.
unquote

i whole-heartedly agree, but i also believe that no WG can 
be held responsible for nor captive by poor, shoddy, or 
incomplete implementations; what must be avoided at all costs 
are any work-arounds that encourage authors to deviate from 
using the semantically logical markup which, when valid AND 
validly parsed, fully support the standard DTDs addressed by, 
for instance, such technical recommendations as the Web Content 
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

if, for example, the Q element is recognized by a user agents' 
parser, there MUST be a default style in the user agents' default 
style sheet for the Q element, just as there are default stylings 
for the EM and STRONG elements, all of which can trigger multi-
modal, user-controlled switches to indicate the presence of a 
semantically meaningful element.

when confronted with a lack of implementation on the part of 
BrowserX, a WG should formally ask the Domain's Co-Ordination group 
to discuss the incomplete implementation, and to approach those user 
agent and third-party technology developers who are members of the 
W3C and formally request implementation by those companies slash 
organizations' Advisory Committee member, who should, in turn, make 
it an internal matter of the utmost importance at the company that 
produces BrowserX.

as i've hectored the WAI domain since 1997, it all comes down to a 
very simple fact: accessibility, usability, internationalization, 
device independence and interoperability are chicken and egg 
questions, in which the W3C is supposed to serve as incubator - the 
problem is, we have many beautiful eggs inside the incubator, but 
the chickens outside are all running around with their heads cut 
off.  what we need is insistence on coding to a published standard 
and implementation of published standards - the Q element, which i 
earlier used as an example, has been part of the HTML family of 
markup languages since 1998 -- when does the onus to implement it 
FULLY and CORRECTLY (that is, according to spec) fall on the 
implementors?  they must be held responsible for the quality (or 
lack thereof) of their products -- ESPECIALLY those produced by 
W3C members.

past behavior is not necessarily an indicator of future behavior; 
if history is repeated, then there is a clear, formal path to 
address the situation.  no group, member, or individual should be 
discouraged or disqualified simply because they work for the 
developer of BrowserX or UserAgentY.

gregory.
 
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ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with
one's own opinion.  -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devils' Dictionary_
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Gregory J. Rosmaita: oedipus@hicom.net or gregory@ubats.org

skype: oedipusnj

sites: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/
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Received on Friday, 30 March 2007 04:03:25 UTC