Re: Future version of HTML!?

You miss the point,
ISO issues standards, W3C being an Industrial consortium issues
recommendations, which may or may not be followed. If they are followed then
they gain some credence as a de-facto standard.

frank
----- Original Message -----
From: Russell Steven Shawn O'Connor <roconnor@uwaterloo.ca>
To: W3C HTML <www-html@w3.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 1999 12:25 PM
Subject: RE: Future version of HTML!?


> On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, Nir Dagan wrote:
>
> > With all due respect to Mr. O'Connor, it would be more constructive
> > if his remarks were more focussed.
>
> True, my comments did diverge from my point.  Although I disagree with the
> new directions the W3C is following, that is tangent to the point I was
> trying to make.
>
> So my claim is that the W3C isn't an authoratiative source on the HTML
> specification since they appointed themselves.  This doesn't preclude them
> being an authrative source.  They seem to claim to have backing of major
> UA vendors.  However their UA vendors don't follow their own specs.  So
> since no one is really following their standards (especially in the UA
> department), and they appointed themselve how could anyone really consider
> their standards authorative?
>
> I claim that the ISO with ISO-HTML is authorative since the ISO is an
> internationally recognised standards body, as opposed to a group of
> companies that vaguely get together.  And although even fewer UA claim to
> implement ISO-HTML, they are least not a self-appointed.
>
> I also am not dismissing the value of the HTML 4.0 specs.  They indeed are
> a normative reference in ISO-HTML.  The correlation between valuable
> standards and authorative standards is often dubious.
>
> --
> Russell O'Connor                           roconnor@uwaterloo.ca
>        <http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~roconnor/>
> ``And truth irreversibly destroys the meaning of its own message''
> -- Anindita Dutta, ``The Paradox of Truth, the Truth of Entropy''
>

Received on Saturday, 23 October 1999 15:35:07 UTC