- From: Jukka Korpela <jkorpela@cc.hut.fi>
- Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 10:22:48 +0300 (EET DST)
- To: Paul Prescod <papresco@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
- cc: www-html@w3.org
On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, Paul Prescod wrote: > ISO is not competing with the W3C or IETF. They are > validating W3Cs efforts in an international forum. If they are, why does ftp://ftp.cs.tcd.ie/isohtml/README list 29 (twenty-nine) differences between the HTML ISO proposal and the HTML 3.2 specification? Some of the differences are irrelevant or something which might well be adopted as clarifications to HTML 3.2 (simply by an announcement from W3C, for example, or by changing the 3.2 spec). But some of them are really strange like making CENTER element illegal, requiring that CENTRE be a recognized alternative spelling to CENTER (as an attribute value), and removing DIR and MENU since are "simply sugared syntax for the <UL> element" (i.e. because implementors have been lazy, implementing them using the same code as for UL). And some of them are good ideas in themselves, like sectioning elements, but involve a _fundamental_ change in the language. The same applies to miscellaneous ingredients picked up from HTML 3.0 and other earlier drafts. > Why should we "kill" this? Basically because we have a working standard now which is sufficiently exact. Creating a more formal ISO standard inevitably means that some things will be changed, causing confusion. The standard would come out in a phase when we should be working on carefully improving the HTML language instead of discussing nuances of a specification which summarizes the common basis of HTML implementations as of early 1996. We have enough confusion among authors and implementors already. HTML 1.0 (anyone ever saw it?), HTML 2.0 (it _is_ an RFC), HTML 3.0 (there's still horrible amount of docs referring to it as a reference spec), HTML 3.2, Cougar (people seem to know a lot about this on the basis of a mere draft DTD). Plus various implementations and manuals taken as reference material by many people. Adding ISO HTML would certainly make things worse, not better. Yucca, http://www.hut.fi/~jkorpela/
Received on Wednesday, 2 April 1997 02:22:27 UTC