Chicken/egg and the "meanwhile problem"

At 04:42 PM 11/25/00 +0000, Sean B. Palmer wrote:
>Using <head profile="[...]">, <meta> or <link> isn't good enough for XML 
>processors which haven't got a clue what they should do when they run 
>across them.

What "XML processors"? Why can't their cluelessness be abrogated?

If the RDF information from <head profile="[...]"> exists on the Web (and 
we now have at least one instance thereof!) then why couldn't it be 
retrievable by something WELL short of an AI implementation?

Even if this is labeled a "hack" it could avoid an absurd amount of "syntax 
negotiation" such as is currently enrapturing the RDF world, not to mention 
whether XHTML will ever be ubiquitous. In point of fact, one could impose 
this "hack" on any HTML file RIGHT NOW and the resultant profiles would 
FOREVER be available without too much wringing of purist hands? The 
"questionnaire" scenario that Seth Russell spoke of seems very practical 
and whatever resulted would always be decodable, much as we can still 
convert a WordStar document into Word 2005 or whatever.

We need a plausible mechanism for indexing such statements as "I tried this 
file out in Lynx 2.8.1 and it's usable therein" or "this one passed Bobby 
3.0" and any later refinements of the method for doing that or niceties of 
how it's encoded/stored/retrieved will be transcended by the nowness of it.

Results trump perfection.

--
Love.
                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE

Received on Saturday, 25 November 2000 13:55:08 UTC