- From: Mark Birbeck <mark.birbeck@x-port.net>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 11:12:42 -0000
- To: 'Tantek Çelik' <tantek@cs.stanford.edu>, "'David Woolley'" <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>, "'Ian Hickson'" <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: <www-html@w3.org>
Tantek Çelik wrote: > Sent: 25 February 2004 23:45 > To: David Woolley; www-html@w3.org > Subject: Re: XHTML and RDF > > > > On 2/25/04 2:32 PM, "David Woolley" <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk> wrote: > > > > >> I posit that the lack of namespaces was not in small part responsible > >> for this success. That is to say, I would guess that every namespace > >> added to a language will dramatically reduce it's ease of use for > >> authors. I know > > > > I'd agree. > > I would too. Of course this is all a matter of opinion, since all the three of you are able to say is that you believe that some technology that took off fast, would *not* have taken off so fast if it had made use of some technology that at the time when it *did* take off fast, hadn't yet been invented ... phew! I don't think you run the risk of finding anyone who can prove that proposition wrong! It does however leave you with the awkward opposite question - if XML is regarded as a substantial improvement over SGML, then how come HTML got anywhere? Is it possible that there is more to the take-up of HTML than simply 'ease of authoring'? (That's assuming that the notion of 'ease of authoring' is accepted, since there is just as strong a case to say that the 'tolerance' of browsers to inaccurate mark-up was more significant.) I think it's worth distinguishing between the end-users of a product, and the people who produce that product. Underpinning discussions like this one is often the assumption that the 'end-user' of HTML is an author; I would suggest that the end-user is the person booking the holiday, trying to find a part in their company's inventory, researching their PhD - and at the moment a lot of this stuff is more difficult to do than it need be. And the authors - to their immense credit - are the ones who are trying to help people do these things, and are using the tools that are available to them. In my mind the majority of authors are characterised by: (a) Their willingness to learn My recollection of the early days of HTML was of a real 'buzz' with people knocking out great web-sites using nothing more than notepad. I even recall that the common criticism of products like FrontPage was that they "messed-up my mark-up". I used to see people on the train with great big HTML books (and JavaScript ones, for that matter), eager to learn whatever they could. (b) Their willingness to do something complicated, if it solves a problem These people are already working around the limitations of both the languages (HTML, CSS, etc.) and the implementations. Authors are delivering useful sites now, despite the efforts of us experts. Whether it's working around the inconsistencies between CSS on Mozilla and IE, or using JavaScript to give their users powerful menus, toolbars or validation, or using XSLT and XPath to get more control and flexibility, they are certainly not 'average Joe-blow authors'. So, I'd rather not take as our starting-point that 'the author' is incapable of grasping anything more complicated than a horizontal line and a break - let's treat them with some respect! And if we do agree that we want better functionality for the end-user - and in particular we want to 'unlock' the wealth of information contained in HTML documents, so that the user can do cleverer things, faster - *then* of course we should move on to looking at how to make that as easy to author as possible. But to paraphrase ... "it should be as simple to author as possible, but no simpler". Regards, Mark Mark Birbeck CEO and CTO x-port.net Ltd. http://www.formsPlayer.com/
Received on Thursday, 26 February 2004 06:12:44 UTC