Re: Usefulness of language annotations

(I think I messed up the original email, and contemplate presenting
the case anew shortly.)

> When you say "developer," are you speaking of content authoring?

Yes, as I see markup more in a development than in a writing realm. In
W3C terminology, both “developer” or “author” fit the bill, however.

> What's the concern you have with existing lanb markup? Why this sudden
> interest? What are you seeking to achieve?

My concern is that language determination should not be a
developer/author problem, but a tool one. That it’s too costly (in
comparison, and cumulatively) to require this of developers. And also
unrealistic (high number and influx of HTML novices).

And so I’m looking to gauge whether we can set better expectations.
Who should do what, and how strongly what is required of who (in terms
of RFC 2119 [1]).

(As of this moment I think there should be a stronger push to have
tools figure this out, and only an advisory for developers/authors to
add markup if *critical* for their target audience.)

> > * The cost of manually marking up languages is much higher (recurring) than
> > of determining them automatically.
>
> So what? A BMW costs more than a Volkswagen, clearly. Are you saying
> there's no place in the world for BMW?

That is not a good analogy. If you wanted to stick with yours, it’s
rather like current recommendations say, “let’s require everyone to
buy a BMW.” (And still that metaphor would only reflect the cost
dimension of my point, not the quality dimension.)


[1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt

-- 
Jens O. Meiert
http://meiert.com/en/

⚐ http://coderesponsibly.org/

Received on Thursday, 14 August 2014 15:08:58 UTC