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

Le 07 avr. 2004, à 14:45, Tantek Çelik a écrit :
> IMHO, your impression is for the most part accurate.  There are some
> software developers among the folks that participate at W3C, but they 
> are in
> the minority.

How to encourage more participation of developpers in WG?
How to encourage companies to send more people?
Does the W3C have to tie the participation to a WG to the release of a 
product?
How do you, in this case, make the participation of Usability, I18N, 
Accessibility etc persons in a WG? (Some of the questions there: 
http://esw.w3.org/topic/ImplementationReport )

> Oh, sure perhaps most *companies* in W3C do some form of software
> development, but that does not mean that the representatives themselves
> actually write software on a day to day basis.

	Yes. I guess it depends on the WG and also that when you write 
software on a day to day basis. You don't have time anymore to write a 
spec or the opposite. Again a question of reality. Not an easy thing to 
solve.

>> Did you realize that even the most advanced browsers, with an enormous
>> manpower behind them, do implement only a little fraction of the
>> standards? And that's not because they are too lazy; that's because 
>> many
>> of these standards are just absurdly complex.
>
> This is precisely correct.

IMHO, this is precisely incomplete and naive. It's everywhere in the 
technological world. Compare a car in 1896 and a car now, not the same 
complexity in the technology. Though I'm pretty sure, mechanical 
engineers of this time, found the principles overly complex in a sense. 
The size of Teams have increased a lot.

I like the part about French language manual. Figure out now what 
non-english native speakers do with W3C Specs in american english. 
Another problem to get a broad participation and implementations of 
specifications.


http://www.clementpanhard.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/html/radio_programme.html

"""
The car came over from France one Sunday morning in June, 1896. I was 
down at the  docks, at Southampton, waiting for her. She was a 
Clément-Panhard made by the Panhard Company, four horsepower, 
horizontal engine behind the driving seat; two high wheels behind, 
chain driven. And Mr. Baxter, he was Colonel Baxter later on, of the 
4th Dorset Territorial - had gone over to France to learn to drive and 
to fetch the car home. I'd promised to meet him at the docks, and he 
was going to teach me to drive.

       Well, there they were, at seven o'clock on Sunday morning. We 
pushed the car outside the dock-gates. "Well", I said, "what about 
it?". Mr. Baxter gave me the book of instructions. "That's no good" I 
said, "it' s in French", I couldn't read French, neither could Mr. 
Baxter. "Well", I said, "you've been over there for a week. You ought 
to know how to drive". He said all the tuition he'd had, was the man 
driving him from the works to the docks. But he told me there was an 
Electric Ignition and a Lamp Ignition. I knew something about the lamp 
ignition, which was what we used on gas and oil engines. So I lighted 
up the lamp and got the tube red-hot. We found the petrol and turned it 
on, and after a long time, we got her to start. I said, "you'd better 
take the wheel". We managed to get into low gear, and off we went, 
through Southampton at four miles an hour. I asked, had we enough 
petrol. "Yes" he said "enough to go to Lands End". "Well", I said, "we 
don't want to go there. Sherborne is where we want to go"...
"""



-- 
Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
W3C Conformance Manager
*** Be Strict To Be Cool ***