- From: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>
- Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 15:56:48 +0200
- To: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- CC: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
Maciej Stachowiak wrote: > ... "Pave the Cowpaths" principle? The text says: "When a > practice is already widespread among authors, consider adopting it > rather than forbidding it or inventing something new." I can't see how > it would ever justify *not* supporting something... The major problem with the Pave the Cowpaths principle is that it is so widely misinterpreted and wrongly applied, that its usefulness is, unfortunately, greatly outweighed by its misuse and abuse. The most common misinterpretation, which has lead to many objections, seems to be that it supports codifying bad practices - something it most certainly isn't intended to mean. Resolving this confusion, and removing those baseless objections would go along way to resolving the issues with it. It's also not helped by the fact that the way the principle is described in the document doesn't clearly and accurately convey its intended meaning. I have previously suggested renaming the principle to Consider Use Cases and moving it from the Compatibility to the Utility category, and similarly clarifying its description and associated examples. -- Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software http://lachy.id.au/ http://www.opera.com/
Received on Friday, 29 May 2009 13:57:33 UTC