- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
- Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 16:42:43 -0700
- To: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
At 10:20 PM +0100 2001/7/05, David Woolley wrote: > > If that's not an option for you (and, by the way, it SHOULD be; the > > idea of a huge site full of static pages is a VERY dated concept and >It's interesting how software goes in circles. HTML was designed to >replace gopher, because gopher looked too much like it had been generated >from a database, but HTML allowed one to mix in links in the correct >context in the text. Once you start mechanically generating HTML from >structured data, you are repeating the circle, rather than making real >progress. I'm not sure I agree with your assertions here that "HTML was designed to replace gopher because it looked like a database," nor do I see that as a lack of progress. Nearly all major web sites these days are generated mechanically from databases, by the way. It allows for separation of primary content from navigation, from an interaction model, from presentation. This is actually a good thing, as there's potential for so much more to be done -- such as server-side transformations to meet user needs. This isn't repeating anything, but it's not necessarily something completely new either, David. I'm not sure why you don't view the move from static pages to structured data as progress. Can you explain a bit more as to what you mean? Perhaps we're not talking about the same things here. >My own perception of the way the W3C tries to go is that they would >want the master document to be a public XML document, not one hidden in >the server, and to use style sheets to customise it to different formats, >client side. Client-side transformations are not the only way, and they aren't even the only "W3C canon" way. See, for example, CC/PP -- which allows for tranformations to occur on the server, on the client, or anywhere in between (proxies, etc). --Kynn -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com> Technical Developer Liaison Reef North America Accessibility - W3C - Integrator Network Tel +1 949-567-7006 ________________________________________ BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL. ________________________________________ http://www.reef.com
Received on Thursday, 5 July 2001 20:22:26 UTC