Re: HTML forms

Harald,

Thanks for your message:

> There is no procedure to "suspend control of aspects" of a specification,

The proposal would involve ammending the registration of the 
text/html media type, incorporating the W3C standards extended
with two attributes of the INPUT element, DEVICE and MAXTIME.

>... the IETF is of the opinion that HTML is not under our control anyway.

I understand that.  There might be substantial benefits from 
reconsidering those opinions.  Within the IETF, public debate 
is assured on almost all controversial matters.  The W3C, 
however, constrains meaningful debate to those willing and able 
to pay US$50,000 per year.  I agree that there was a point in 
the early development of web standards when that constraint was 
beneficial.  Now, however, with Netscape owned by a company 
shipping MSIE, and the stagnation or regression of the core HTML 
standards, along with the concerns raised in Norman Solomon's 
article, I believe the time has come to return certain aspects 
of the control of HTML to the IETF.  Even if that view is not 
shared by the IETF, I the only way I would not be certain that 
a debate on the topic would be healthy for the Internet communty
would be if the W3C were to take an affirmative stand on issues 
involving microphone upload for language instruction and 
asyncronous audio conferencing.

Cheers,
James

Received on Thursday, 30 March 2000 16:04:51 UTC