Futility of public forum

Regardless of the merits of this 3.2 draft, it concerns me that
the standardizing process is ignoring this public forum.  The
fact that Cnet published a news item on 3.2 gives it a weight
and legitimacy that will cause many people to start coding to it
and calling it a "standard", and it had no review by this forum
at all.  Are those of us on this list who couldn't fork up the
15,000 because we represent the non-commercial aspects of the
net just engaged in a masturbation exercise here, or does the
W3 actually want to hear us?

Perhaps if it were posted to this list before it was posted to 
the world, we could have made minor suggestions like clarifying
the language of <div> or restoring "class" that perhaps were
just overlooked. Otherwise what is this list for?

It _is_ possible to create a complete, technically superior,
painstakingly precise, useful standard in a short time with
public comment.  Look at PNG: we did it in 4 months, without
a six-figure budget, with public comment.  It met all of our
goals, is state-of-the-art, and is already supported by more
vendors than HTML 3.X. I am not yet ready to join the defectors
on this one--I think HTML can be saved and I don't think we
can drum up enough support for an alternative yet (PNG started
with support from CompuServe and a mob of folks angry with
Unisys; I don't think we have that advantage here).

Received on Wednesday, 8 May 1996 13:28:44 UTC