- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:22:48 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Toby A Inkster <tai@g5n.co.uk>
- Cc: distobj@acm.org, public-html@w3.org
On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Toby A Inkster wrote: > Ian Hickson wrote: > > On Tue, 18 Nov 2008, Mark Baker wrote: > > > > > Can anybody name a long deployed system whose constituent protocols were > > > specified as a monolith? I can't. > > > > The United States of America. > > http://uscode.house.gov/ > > Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the US constitution consist of > seven separate articles, with very little overlap; plus the bill of > rights, again with little overlap with the original seven, added a few > years later? And a number of smaller amendments over the years. The US Code (the law), which is based on the constitution, is a monolith (as Mark put it). > That seems to be very much what is being proposed by splitting the > current HTML5 spec: several specifications covering different areas of > responsibility, with as little overlap as possible, but worked on by > mostly a single team to ensure a coherent result; with the possibility > for additions a few years later; and structured in a manner so that one > spec may be amended without the others needing a rewrite. In fact the US constitution plus the US Code are very similar to what we have now -- the group charter (original constitution), the design principles (amendments), plus a single spec of conformance rules. I'm not arguing that this is a precedent we should or should not follow. (As has been noted several times, I'd be happy to split the HTML5 spec if we had any volunteers to do so.) I merely put this forward as an example of a long deployed system whose constituent protocols were specified as a monolith, because Mark asked for one. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Wednesday, 19 November 2008 01:23:27 UTC