RE: complexity (was: Re: XHTML and RDF)

<...>
>Perhaps what the W3C should concentrate on is culling back 
>existing standards and simplifying them. Sometimes less is better than more. 
>Perhaps it would be best if the W3C suspended activities on new specs to 
>work on simplifying the specs they've already written.
<...>

And how wolud it help? Standards may be too complex for people who
are not going to implement them (at least such claims were made).
I did not hear complaints from people implementing them yet.
Sure you can make standards simple.
But can you make them simple without leaving ven more freedom for interpretation?
Many problems (CSS in particular) are rooted in spec not being specific enough how
should one thing or other be implemented.
Relaxed standartds will result in relaxed implementations, and thats zeroes any value
of standart by definition.

I do not develop browsers, I deal with web development, but I see no problems reading specs.
And I may be mistaken, but I guess "backward compatibility" and problems alike give
developers much more headache than any standartd.

Regards,
Rimantas

Received on Wednesday, 7 April 2004 10:43:41 UTC