- From: Daniel Hiester <alatus@earthlink.net>
- Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 13:52:55 -0700
- To: "www-html" <www-html@w3.org>
Since this thread is getting into techical discussion on the level of
opinion, I thought I'd drop my two cents.
When one is talking about "what is HTML?" there has been, and still is, a
sense of duality concerning the answer to that question.
Simply put, there is HTML as defined by the W3C's specifications, and then
there is HTML as defined by popular implementation in web browsers. It is
kind of a metaphor of how some of U.S. Gov't works (I'm sorry to everyone
who isn't in the U.S.... this isn't a U.S. ego thing, I'm still young and
uneducated as to how other gov'ts work). The W3C acts at the legislative
branch, writing the laws, but the browser vendors, like MS and Netscape/AOL,
act as the executive branch. The problem here is that there is no head of
the Web's executive branch. We have multiple agencies competing against each
other, but they are not all held responsible by one single authority.
In America, not all laws that get passed are successfully implemented. For
example, it took a lot of fighting, to get racial equality laws to be
enforced in the southern States.
I think that the World Wide Web is a similar beast, in that way. The W3C can
pass specifications ("laws"), but the implementation ("enforcement") of
these specs will not always follow.
I suppose the question is: Is this model healthy for HTML? Will converting
everything into XML change anything? Is there anything that can be done to
help?
Daniel
Received on Saturday, 2 June 2001 16:45:49 UTC