- From: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
- Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 20:21:54 +0200
- To: "Rafael Weinstein" <rafaelw@google.com>
- Cc: "Henri Sivonen" <hsivonen@iki.fi>, "Webapps WG" <public-webapps@w3.org>, "Yehuda Katz" <wycats@gmail.com>
On Fri, 11 May 2012 19:57:37 +0200, Rafael Weinstein <rafaelw@google.com> wrote: > It was wrong for me to editorialize about SVG and MathML -- and > "punish" was very poor word choice. I apologize to anyone who was > insulted. It certainly wasn't my intent. > > I should have just said that I'm frustrated with the world we've > arrived in WRT HTML vs XML and left it at that. Fair enough... cheers > On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 3:07 AM, Charles McCathieNevile > <chaals@opera.com> wrote: >> On Fri, 11 May 2012 10:55:27 +0200, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> >> wrote: >> >>> On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 7:45 PM, Rafael Weinstein <rafaelw@google.com> >>> wrote: >>>> >>>> I'm very much of a like mike with Henri here, in that I'm frustrated >>>> with the situation we're currently in WRT SVG & MathML & parsing >>>> foreign content in HTML, etc... In particular, I'm tempted to feel >>>> like SVG and MathML made this bed for themselves and they should now >>>> have to sleep in it. >>> >>> >>> I think that characterization is unfair to MathML. The math working >>> group tried hard to avoid local name collisions with HTML. They >>> didn't want to play namespace games. As I understand it, they were >>> forced into a different namespace by W3C strategy tax arising from the >>> "NAMESPACE ALL THE THINGS!" attitude. >> >> >> Actually, I think even that is an unfair characterisation. At the time >> both >> these technologies were developed (mid-late 90s) everyone assumed that >> XML >> was the path of the future for everything, and that de-crentralised >> extensibility was a critical requirement for a powerful web platform. >> >> Given that scenario, it is unclear whether there is a better approach. >> The >> current HTML approach of "if it is important it will get into the >> mainline >> spec" effectively breaks the key extensibility assumption. Leading >> implementors like Adobe, SodiPodi and Inkscape all introduced namespaced >> content all over the SVG map - in many cases doing things that active >> SVG WG >> members thought were excessive. Likewise Microsoft Office (at the time >> probably as widespread as "web browsers" in general) introduced >> namespaced >> content all over HTML (IE didn't support XHTML). >> >> Seven years later, both of those assumptions came under attack from the >> nascent WHAT-WG approach to updating HTML - but unlike the case for >> HTML, >> where the market leader had clearly resisted implementing XHTML, SVG in >> particular was backed by a number of XML-happy engines. It was several >> more >> years before SVG and MathML were incorporated into HTML in a way that >> clearly made sense. >> >> Punishing people, or even ridiculing them, for using XML in the late >> 90s, >> seems counter-productive at best. Outside HTML even Microsoft - who >> were one >> of the big creative forces behind XML - were pushing it everywhere, it >> was >> considered de riguer for making the mobile web a possibility outside >> Opera >> (which supported it anyway, but didn't require it), and it had, and >> still >> has, huge deployment. It just failed on the "web browser" platform, for >> reasons that are far easier to see in hindsight than they were at the >> time. >> >> cheers >> >> Chaals >> >> -- >> Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group >> je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan noen norsk >> http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera: http://www.opera.com -- Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan noen norsk http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
Received on Friday, 11 May 2012 18:22:37 UTC