- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 03:25:03 +0000 (UTC)
On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, liorean wrote: > > Document versus application: > This distinction I feel is pretty clear. A document is a single content > instance, which means data, possibly with presentational hints, behavior > and functionality attached to it, but everything essentially only > related to the content. An application on the other hand is user > interface, with less connection to content and more connection to user > interaction and handling of user input that is not content related. What > this essentially means is that it handles I would call perishable > interactions, that are not persistent in a content instance, which they > would be in the document. I think there is no distinction. It's a spectrum, with "document" at one end (pure text maybe with semantic markup, no hyperlinks, no forms, like this e-mail) and "application" at the other end (sophisticated UI, high levels of interaction, like Microsoft Word or Quake III Arena). See also the start of http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1086052347&count=1 . The scope of WHATWG's work is everything from where "documents" stop being pure text to about half-way along the road to fully-fledged sophisticated UI applications. The reason for not addressing the hugely complicated UI stuff is discussed in http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1086387609&count=1 (search for "detailed spec problem") or in http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1086158925&count=1 (search for "Second:"). Basically, you wouldn't be able to specify the API for such an application framework given the rate at which toolkit vendors innovate at the moment. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:25:03 UTC