Re: ISO and HTML

Jukka Korpela wrote:
> I definitely appreciate ISO in general, but not all things can be
> standardized along the same procedures. As regards to HTML and the Web,
> the ISO standardization process is too slow (and the slowness of that
> process is basically inherent, for reasons which justify the long
> delays in many areas). We can't simply wait for years to have
> the next development phase of standard HTML, so it is better to live
> with e.g. W3C standards "only" instead of ISO standards.

The W3C does not seem to make standards in the precise sense. They make
specifications which they "recommend" their members adhere to. Their
"specifications" seem to studiously avoid the word "standard".
 
> The practical question is how to shoot down the ISO HTML standardization
> effort as fast as possible. (There might be good ideas on the draft,
> deserving due consideration by W3C, of course.) I'm pretty sure that
> it is relatively easy to convince _one_ national standardization body
> about the whole thing (of HTML standardization _by ISO_) being a wrong
> idea, thus preventing the approval by ISO, but this would by the hard way,
> from the viewpoint of wasted human resources. Any better ideas?

You are the only person I have heard express a negative point of view
about this process. ISO is not competing with the W3C or IETF. They are
validating W3Cs efforts in an international forum. Why should we "kill"
this?

 Paul Prescod

Received on Friday, 28 March 1997 10:49:30 UTC