Re: Request for the WHATWG draft to converge with the W3C draft

It's unfortunate that non-normative text consumes so much decision  
making effort. It's even more unfortunately that it consumes  
"convergence" effort.

Of course, examples can have influence, so it's not totally bonkers to  
care about the e.g., stylistic aspects of them. Examples also grow  
stale, though this is  less of a problem with the WHATWG draft as it's  
continually updated.

It strikes me that there is a technical fix to this particular  
situation, if we agree that a large variety of examples from many  
perspectives is valuable.

There's no reason that the examples have to be a fixed part of the  
text. Instead, one could allow for the submission of arbitrary  
examples from arbitrary people and add controls to the document to  
include and filter the examples. The example pool could allow for  
ranking, voting, and tagging. That plus a bit more metadata (person  
and date come to mind) would allow for a really nice experience. I  
could ask for the spec with anti-patterns, with Ian-examples, with  
examples submitted within the last year, with examples from such and  
such a text, with "pitfall" examples, and so on.

Example boxes could have search or carousel buttons so I could explore  
many examples on demand.

Since people would be encouraged to submit, rate, and otherwise  
contribute examples, it would provide a nice affordance to review the  
spec in a fine grained, yet engaged, way. Similarly, it would allow  
many people to write examples that express their perspectives on e.g.,  
style, or even the content of the spec. This might channel energy into  
productive work rather than a direct power struggle. For example, it  
seems much more interesting to have additional examples of the form:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
   <title>Flash test page</title>
  </head>
  <body>
   <p>
    <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
     <param name=movie value="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/triggerpages_mmcom/flash.swf 
">
     This page requires the use of a really awesome technology. Since  
you
     have not installed the software product required to view this
     page, possibly because you are in the grip of Steve Job's bizarre  
vendetta
     against the real, aka, Flash-using, Web, you should try ditching  
your glass brick
     and getting a reasonable phone.
    </object>
   </p>
  </body>
</html>

than to have *debate* whether a certain example is appropriate or only  
having anodyne examples.

(Note, I don't share the sentiment expressed by this hacked example :))

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Sunday, 27 June 2010 23:13:44 UTC