- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:56:12 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
- Cc: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Thu, 19 Feb 2009, Sam Ruby wrote: > > The only way forward in situations like this is to start over with a new > format. That's one way forward, but not the only one. HTML5's approach has been to embrace the reality of implementations, and replace previous specifications with a definitive comprehensive set of requirements that matches implementations, including their really strange behaviour (such as "quirks mode" in HTML). It's a whole hell of a lot more work than writing a new language from scratch, but it has the advantages of not requiring consumers to support two languages (one of which is effectively undefined) instead of just one, and of not requiring producers to start from scratch when updating to the new technologies (the latter is not a big problem for feed formats, where the feeds typically are generated from source material, but is quite a big deal for original-form formats like HTML, where the content exists only in the form of the "legacy" language). -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Thursday, 19 February 2009 11:56:51 UTC