Re: what *I* would do with Wilbur.

At 04:57 PM 5/9/96 -0500, Scott E. Preece wrote:

>and move this to the IETF as soon as possible.  I suspect the vendors
>could be convinced to do this in relatively short order...

Based on what? Since when did the vendors implement full standards? None of
them comply (fully) with HTML 2.0, and it was defined to be descriptive! 

Microsoft [claims to compatible with HTML 3.0] though they are demonstrably
not (and we all know the status of HTML 3.0). I can't even find the place on
Netscape's site where they state their conformance level. I think their
interest in the HTML standard has dropped off of the map. They mention
particular features and extensions that they support, but they don't mention
the word "standard" except in this sentence:

Native Support 
     Available for HTML, HTTP, FTP, NNTP, SMTP, MIME, S/MIME, S/MIME POP3
standards. 

Interestingly, in the same section they say:

Support for Open Scripting Languages
     Languages include Java and a Java-compatible scripting language. 

Which is startling since Java is OO and JavaScript is procedural/functional.

Anyhow, my point is that W3C can't wrestle control of HTML back from vendors
who couldn't care less about standards compliance. They can only provide an
alternative and trust that the market will pick and choose the bits they
like. If the alternative is of high technical quality, certain subsets of
the market will adopt it in its entirety. Else, nobody will.

 Paul Prescod

[claims to compatible with HTML 3.0]
http://www.microsoft.com/ie/platform/inetshet.htm

Received on Thursday, 9 May 1996 18:55:05 UTC