- From: Christophe Strobbe <christophe.strobbe@esat.kuleuven.be>
- Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 18:40:17 +0100
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Hi Gez and All, On 14/03/06, Christophe Strobbe wrote: <quote> How specific should a baseline definition be? </quote> Gez Lemon responded: <blockquote> That's a good question. I've assumed that the baseline was about technology, and not the features of the technology. For example, specifying HTML in the baseline presumably covers features such as object, link, longdesc, etc, even though they may be partially supported or poorly implemented. The media for the object might be another technology in its own right, but I wouldn't have thought of specifying the object element itself in the baseline. <blockquote> A list of technologies is a simple binary representation that does not do justice to the reality of incomplete implementations by user agents. Some websites that puts HTML 4.01 in their baseline will assume that every feature is supported, while others will assume that object, link, longdesc, etc are not adequately supported by the user agents of a significant percentage of their visitors. This means that some websites will use fall-back techniques such as 'embed', while others will not. This takes me to another aspect of my original question: if websites use 'embed' or other non-standard features, shouldn't that be part of the baseline also? Just specifying 'HTML 4.01' in the baseline would be inaccurate. The third aspect of my question is whether a baseline should specify which version or profile of a technology is assumed. For example, is it sufficient to say "HTML 4.01" or is it necessary to say "HTML 4.01 Strict"? (I'm in favour of the latter, more specific, approach.) Some W3C technologies have been "modularized": is it necessary to specify which modules are assumed to be supported? I think it is. The question about modularizaton also throws a different light on the question of specifying whether specific features (e.g. object in HTML) can be mentioned: after all, modules are collections of such features. Is it also necessary to specify which MIME types are assumed to be supported? This is relevant when using XHTML 1.0. Regards, Christophe Strobbe -- Christophe Strobbe K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on Document Architectures Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM tel: +32 16 32 85 51 http://www.docarch.be/ Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm
Received on Tuesday, 14 March 2006 17:40:28 UTC