DPF comments from the CSS WG

Hello MMI WG,

The CSS working group reviewed DPF 
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-DPF-20041122/) and actually has very 
little to say about it. Naturally, we looked in particular at the 
relationship to Media Queries, but it seems DPF and Media Queries are 
orthogonal. Here are some comments nevertheless.

1.  DPF allows a client to learn about a device's capabilities and 
configuration, which enables dynamic (on-the-fly) document generation 
suitable for a given media size; however, it does not provide for 
static generation of contents which present suitably on a variety of 
media sizes.
 
2.  While the infrastructure provided by this spec seems a good building 
block, additional standardization is required to specify the set of 
properties, attributes, events, etc. that are to be used in a specific 
solution; the protocol to be used for communicating these values must 
also be chosen.  (An ECMAScript binding is provided as an appendix in 
the current proposal.)
 
3.  Implementation of this solution requires a discrete investment on 
the part of both UA's and clients which may be justified in some 
markets but will probably not be justifiable simply to provide page 
size determinism[2].

In general, it seemed a well-thought out and reasonably robust mechanism 
to enable dynamic exchange of hierarchically structured device 
information, including capabilities, configuration, user preferences, 
and environmental conditions.  

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-DPF-20041122/
[2] 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/CR-css3-page-20040225/#page-size-media-query


For the CSS WG,
Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos                               W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Tuesday, 18 January 2005 13:33:43 UTC