Re: code, samp, kbd, var

Karl Dubost wrote:
> 
> 
> Le 19 mai 2007 à 10:33, David Woolley a écrit :
>> Karl Dubost wrote:
>>
>>> Would Conformance address your request? A conformance section has in 
>>> its goals:
>>
>> I doubt it.  Conformance sections are generally only really understood
>> by people who are expert in reading standards.
> 
> hmm interesting.
> A specification is not done for someone who doesn't know HTML, as it is 

It's also done for those who are going to write the documentation for 
authors of prepare lectures for them.  (For software documentation, 
standards are actually quite useful for people writing to the standard, 
as they often explain important boundyar cases that the man page writer 
didn't bother about.)

Given the often poor technical quality of user documentation, they can 
also be use to resolve disputes about correct usage, in which case only 
a small part of the standard is likely to be read, which is unlikely to 
be the conformance part.

> not a tutorial. It is the goal of a specification to be read by 
> implementers.
> Now, it doesn't mean that the HTML WG will not produce tutorials, but 

Tutorials are probably the least significant type of author 
documentation; most authors will never read them from cover to cover, 
but they really need to be read in substantial chunks. The other types are:

- cook books, i.e. samples of code that can be used for common
   functions without being understood - unfortunately the web
   itself is one of the main cookbooks!
- references, which typically describe individual elemens, and
   may include indexes by functional area; they may also include
   syntax information, but that is less likely to be read;
- college lectures, which are becoming more significant and is
   the only way that most authors will ever receive any
   structured explanation.

Received on Sunday, 20 May 2007 08:27:02 UTC