Re: Minutes from 16 November 2000 WCAG WG telecon

At 11:03 PM +0000 11/20/00, Sean B. Palmer wrote:
>  > ...but will the Semantic Web have a place?
>I'm pretty sure it will. A lot of people are staking their reputations on
>it.

Yes, but that and a nickel will buy you a cup of coffee.

>  > >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?
>Forwards compatability is the most important thing, according to DC.

"DC"?  District of Columbia?  Direct Current?

>  > >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.
>What if I used <b/ as a piece of my markup? I could still call it markup but
>it clearly isn't...<b> is still markup, and it could be legal SGML, but
>attaching behaviours to it isn't.

And this would be a bad thing because...?

You still haven't answered that.

>  > >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.
>True, but we should be using non-markup methods where we can.

Why?

>Existing user agents won't have a place in the Web of tomorrow (by
>definition). I'm not prepared to discuss that, because it will take more
>hours of searching for quotes...

I don't accept your scriptures.  Quotes from various "web luminaries"
who have impressed you won't necessarily hold water with me.  I don't
accept dogmatic arguments.  So I'm glad you don't have time to look
those up.

I'm at a loss to see how existing user agents can be so callously
discarded -- or even why you'd want to do that.  I especially worry
about assistive technology, as it has long lagged far behind the
"current releases" and it's not reasonable to suggest that all web
users will be able to upgrade to this "web of tomorrow" model which
you propose.

Lack of backwards compatibility is a barrier to access by many people
with disabilities (as well as many people without disabilities).

>  > >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.
>No, no, no: Anne seems to be as far as I can tell a very nice person.

That's beside the point.  You are belittling her contribution at this
point because of the way she referred to SGML.

>The
>fact that she would spend so long contributing to this discussion proves
>that. I just pointed out that as she refers to SGML as SMTL, she obviously
>doesn't want to discuss SGML, because he doesn't feel she needs to learn
>about it. That's fine! The problem is that that is one of the core tenets of
>my disagreement.

Actually, it's also possible that she made a typo or a simple
mistake, and you took that and used that as "evidence" that she
doesn't know what she's talking about.  That kind of typo flame has
long been discredited (e.g. on Usenet since I first got on the net),
and pointing it out in two messages just makes you look bad.  So
she got the acronym wrong, so what?  Your tone of dismissal was
not appropriate.

>  > 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.
>They aren't separate as far as working together. But they shouldn't be
>combined.

Why not?  Can you answer this without referring to SGML principles?

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

Received on Monday, 20 November 2000 18:39:55 UTC