Re: <math>, <fig>, ... (fwd)

Once upon a time Dave Carter shaped the electrons to say...
>The lack of <math> is a major flaw. While <math> in html 3.0 might not be

Including math now would be a *joke*.  It belongs in experimental DTDs 
until it is ready to be ratified - not in a standards document.  <MATH> is
one of the major reasons HTML 3.0 floundered!

>if we adopt 3.2. Lack of backwards compatability with <fig> is a major

<FIG> was experimental, if you used it you were taking a risk.  You lost
this one.  That's life.

>flaw. Lack of style sheet support is a major flaw. You say you are doing
>that, ok so delay the release until you have. The fact that html 3.2

Why delay it?  You could say that about anything.  And that is what 
happened to 3.0 - hey, we can't send this out as a spec until math is
done... or style sheets... or foreign fonts... or...

And what happend is the public *and* the browser makers finally said "screw
you, we're not waiting", and I think they were right to do so.  *Two years*
ago I attended Web World and heard about the 3.0 features and how they 
were coming along, and that it would be done in 6 months max.

2 years ago.

The wait was bullshit, 2 years is eternity for the Internet.  If Livingston
took two years between revisions of our products I'd quickly be looking
for a new job.

>care. The trouble is that browser developers (and I mean browser
>developers for serious use, not mass-market) will accept it and will
>therefore not implement, improve and extend those html 3.0 features

Probably, sometimes life isn't nice.  But I would expect them to continue
to impliment the features being worked on as experimental - after all 3.0
was always experimental.  And that means math and style sheets, plus
object and others.

>And thats another problem. The public will think that, and they will be
>wrong. Thats why 3.2 should be 2.2.

3.0 is a rotting, festering corpse.  It is about time the farce was
ended and the damn thing was buried.  3.0 mutated so many times it 
became utterly meaningless, the number wasa curse.  Everyone and their
duck claimed to be HTML 3.0 compatible, books covered 3.0 - and almost
none of them agreed on it!

-MZ
--
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responsible for everything contained herein.  So don't waste my managers'
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Received on Friday, 10 May 1996 06:56:47 UTC