Re: Minutes from 16 November 2000 WCAG WG telecon

At 10:13 AM +0000 11/20/00, Sean B. Palmer wrote:
>  > > So write the style first. I often write independant styles. If you're
>>  > not able to create styles independant of markup, I suggest that
>>  > is because you have spent too long following anachronous,
>>  > limited, and blatantly illegal Web programming habits, and I
>  > > suggest you change pretty soon before the WWW changes first.
>  > Ouch, Sean ....
>It's true, and I could have been a lot harsher.

You could be as rude as you want, Sean, but you have to remember that
the purpose of WAI is not to insult people but to teach and guide
them.  I personally can likely be twenty times more insulting than
you at your worst, but it accomplishes little in the way of meeting
the goals of this project.  I suggest that you might want to
reconsider how you speak to Anne and other members of the group who
may not hold to your very specific, technical, dogmatic view of the
web.  Elitism and scorn gets you nowhere.

>I'm saying
>things like, "you have spent too long following anachronous, limited, and
>blatantly illegal Web programming habits", because it appears to me to be
>all too true.....

On the contrary, I think that very few of your adjectives -- besides
possibly "limited" -- really hold up in a practical analysis.  I think
that "blatantly illegal" may be the most laughable of those, and before
you start accusing your fellow working group members of illegal
activities, I think you had best tone down the rhetoric several
steps.

>I look at it from a Semantic Web point of view, where all
>elements are semantically described and linked (see RDF -
>http://www.w3.org/RDF). Presentational markup *won't* have a place on the
>SW,

...but will the Semantic Web have a place?

It sounds like a nice (but limited) dream, but I question whether or
not this proposal should be the one and only guiding vision for the
web.  In fact, I think that's darn near impossible anyway (the web is
far beyond the control of anyone person, Saint Berners-Lee or not),
and the question may likely result from market pressures rather than
philosophical debates.

That said, I might as well take a bit of time to dispute your
philosophy anyway.

>and we might as well start getting used to that fact now. Anyone that
>uses presentational markup is:-
>1. Well behind the times, for a start

Not necessarily, especially if you consider browser support issues.
Being "behind the times" is not a bad thing -- remember the idea of
backwards compatibility?

>2. Abusing the entire principles of SGML and markup in general

You say this with such certainty!  As if those principles were
holy.  (See the other thread where I commented on this).  To most
people, the point is meaningless.  So what if these "principles of
SGML" are ignored?  You have not provided any reason that anyone
creating a page should -care- if they ignore SGML but their page
still works for their target audiences.

>3. Does nothing for the accessibility of their site

Actually, there are a number of cases in which presentation can
enhance the accessibility of a site -- especially (as Anne has
noted on several occasions) for users who have cognitive disabilities
as well as general audiences.

Good application of visual design techniques -- which is very much
"presentation" and not "semantics" -- can vastly enhance the
usability and accessibility of a web site.

It's not so simple to say "presentation BAD, semantics GOOD" when
talking about web accessibility.  The issue is far more complex
than you make it out to be.

Add to the mix the fact that many semantic enhancements are _not_
used by existing user agents and assistive technology, and you can
easy get a "semantics-rich" web site that is THEORETICALLY more
accessible but in practice LESS accessible to many audiences.

>4. Ensures that the SW is dragged down just a little bit further

You say this as if it were necessarily a bad thing.  This "semantic
web" is just one person's holy grail.  Please don't assume that it is
a universal goal.

Again, you have not provided any reason that anyone would necessarily
care about this "semantic web" vision.

>5. Has generally evaluated the entire Web architecture situation incorrectly

I disagree with this.  I think that you are short-sighted on this
issue and clouded by your own dogmatic approach (not sure where you
learned it, but it is obvious that you are parroting back what you
have heard somewhere, and you believe it to be gospel truth).

>I see that I am fighting a pointless battle here, especially when you refer
>to SGML as SMTL...

I see that you are trying to attack Anne as a person and playing a
very elitist, "I know SGML better than you" strategy.  That might work
on discussion groups but you have to realize that this is a working
group, and in a working group, we are here specifically to work on a
project.  If you can't handle the fact that there will be people who
don't know the right acronyms, then you probably don't want to be on
this working group.

>Presentational markup is wrong for a great many reasons, but at the end of
>the day it is still wrong. No matter how much you argue on the matter, you
>could never convince me, or the majority of experienced Web programmers, and
>I hope you'll come to realise *why*.

Presentational markup is quite fine and appropriate.  It just depends
on how you use it.  Statements such as "presentational markup is
wrong" are naive and short-sighted.

Maybe I'm not as experienced a web designer as you are -- I've only
been doing this professionally since 1994, mind you -- but I think
that claiming the majority of experienced web authors believe
presentation to be "wrong" is very naive; you are believing your
own rhetoric here.  The majority of experienced people who design
for the web are very much concerned with presentational markup.
This should be self-evident; if your scenario were true, then surely
there would be no accessibility problems whatsoever!

But as one of those experienced web programmers, I think it's
important to point out that presentational markup is very useful
when you are creating specific presentations (such as XHTML, WML,
VoiceXML interfaces or XSL-FO output) for specific devices.  XSLT
pretty much begs to be applied to a presentational language based
on XML, and to claim that "no no it's SGML, it can't be presentational!"
is pretty darn short-sighted and frighteningly dogmatic.

>  > .... let's not separate presentation from strucure and semantics
>>  so much as coordinate presentation features into structure and semantics.
>>  Bear in mind that presentation includes both visual and auditory
>  > elementents ... as well as elements that work in speech readers and
>  > braille presentations.
>I'm not saying get rid of presentation.

No, just that it's "wrong"?

I think Anne actually has it more right.  I think the problem is the
misuse of presentation -- and this is the approach taken in the
WAI guidelines -- not the existence of presentation altogether.  I
think it is very important that presentation and semantics be
coordinated; this view that they are completely separate is as
dangerous as the view that only presentation matters.

>I'm not saying graphics and scripts
>should be removed from pages. I'm saying don't use markup to assert
>behavioural styles and expect it to work in the future: because it won't
>(hooray!).

It won't?  I'm glad I don't have _your_ crystal ball, I'd have to
return it to the magic shop for a tune-up. :)

>  > My reason for being here is to see that disabled folks who aren't
>>  well-served by text aren't left off the "acccommodated on the
>  > web" list ...
>I know. That's one of the main things bugging me. I'm not saying "get rid of
>style, or fancinifcation", I'm just saying it's illegal to us markup for
>presentation, so separate the style from the content. It's really not that
>hard to understand, so I'm not sure why I have had to spend hours trying to
>clarify it...still, heigh ho.

I think that you don't have to spend hours to clarify it; I think, in
fact, that you are being rather patronizing about the whole thing
_and_ I think you're not very good at explaining.  This is why you
feel you are spending hours saying it.

Also, you make statements such as "illegal", and you state that markup
can't be used for presentation.  This seems to be an overly narrow view
of markup and the term "illegal", just thrown out there, is overly
inflammatory.

>I'd like to give a new example:-

Oh boy.

>      <b>bold text</b>
>      <strong>strong text</strong>
>What is the difference? Let's say I didn't know what HTML was. By looking at
>the source code, I could tell probably deduce what <strong> means, but what
>is this <b> thing?  I don't know.

This is a meaningless example, Sean, and hopefully you know enough about
markup to know why it is.  Assuming that there are others out there who
don't know, I'll provide the following counter example:

      <boldtext>bold text</boldtext>
      <str>strong text</str>

Clearly, the first is preferable to the second!  I can tell by reading
the tag name "boldtext" what it is meant to say, but the second "str"
is meaningless.  What is that?  Is it a string?  A stereo?  A street?
Who knows?  This, then, is what the semantic web is all about:  you
can discern the meaning from the "boldtext" tag, but the "str" tag
is clearly opaque to inspection and should not be used.

The above paragraph is complete poppycock, but Sean, if you think that
the semantic web is all about tag names (which are pretty much
arbitrary anyway), then clearly you need to do some more reading on
the subject which you care so much about.

>That is the principle of the Semantic Web:
>everything should have a meaning, and if it has meaning, attach style to it
>depending on that meaning. BTW: The vision of the Semantic Web was created
>by the same guy who invented the WWW, Tim Berners-Lee.

You mean Saint Tim Berners-Lee.

>To sum up, you would never be able to create an XML language based on the
>principles that you so steadfastly stick to, and that's your loss, not mine.
>If you want to go ahead and believe that behavioural based Web browsers rule
>the world, then that is fine by me as well, but *please*, *please*, *please*
>first consider why the core creators/designers/founders and also the most
>experienced Web architects all disagree with you.

Just as a favor, can you be a little more insulting to Anne?  Since she
and I are getting along reasonably well now, there's few people picking
on her, and she really needs more snide arrogance thrown her way
every now and then.

Good play, by the way, claiming that everyone agrees with you and
suggesting that anyone who thinks otherwise is completely and utterly
wrong.  Way to play that elitist newcomer punk role.

--Kynn
-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
http://www.kynn.com/

Received on Monday, 20 November 2000 17:33:36 UTC