Requirements to make an effective standard (Was: Geolocation in the browser)

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007, Dave Raggett wrote:
>
> To develop an effective standard, there needs to be a broad consensus on 
> requirements and the proposed solution across all of the players. 

Actually, I'm not convinced that's true, unless you define "all of the 
players" quite narrowly. In particular, I think the WHATWG effort itself 
is proof of this -- we certainly don't have a "broad consensus" from "all 
of the players", if you include players such as those developing XHTML2 
and XForms user agents. However, the existing (yet still draft!) Web 
Applications 1.0 spec ("HTML5") is already effective in getting 
interoperability between an important set of vendors, and has been 
implemented and used on a number of sites already. In fact, one could 
argue that, relative to their states and ages, the current early HTML5 
draft spec has been more effective in this regard than the "standard" 
HTML4 spec, despite the latter having a more "broad" consensus.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 26 February 2007 22:45:03 UTC