Re: CfC: Request transition of HTML Microdata to Candidate Recommendation

On Sun, 25 Nov 2012 23:25:38 +0400, Nathan <nathan@webr3.org> wrote:

> Charles McCathie Nevile wrote:
>> On Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:15:26 +0400, Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com>  
>> wrote:
>>>> The fact that RDFa already does what Microdata does has
>>>> been elaborated upon before:
>>  Yes. For what it is worth, I personally think RDFa is generally a  
>> technically better solution. But as Marcos says, "so what"? Our job at  
>> W3C is to make standards for the technology the market decides to use.
>
> Standards, plural? not a standard way to do things, singular?

If the market wants more than one way, that's what we should be offering.  
I think we all agree that it is *better* to have an agreed single way. Of  
*course* we all agree that it is better to have the technologically best  
specification as the standard.

But standards are a bit like toothbrushes. We generally agree they are a  
good idea, but we often prefer to use our own.

It sometimes takes several efforts and several years for the market to  
decide what it wants. Look at SVG as an example - there were a number of  
competing technologies developed *after* it - most particularly canvas,  
but also Silverlight, and to some extent certain capabilities of Flash.  
Only then did browsers decide to adopt it, and there turn out to be use  
cases for different technologies that do at least some of the same things.

I don't think it was better for the web when W3C was not the place that  
canvas was being standardised. I don't even think it was better for SVG,  
to be honest. It took some years to get constructive dialogue on why  
people want one, the other, or both, and how they best fit together in the  
world. The sort of constructive dialogue that is the special product of  
W3C, which I think is  unparalleled in its ability to provide this value  
to the Web.

(Warning, I think we are getting to the edge of  thetopic for the  
question, and that is already only incidental for the list at large...).

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Sunday, 25 November 2012 20:04:06 UTC