- From: Orion Adrian <oadrian@hotmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:22:11 -0400
- To: www-html@w3.org, www-qa@w3.org
>I think the discussion should be there, because it's all about process, >quality, etc. > >Le 08 avr. 2004, à 11:09, Orion Adrian a écrit : >>Yes. The specs themselves are too complex without regards to their >>implementations. If I as an individual can come up with specs that do as >>much or more than the existing specs, write the engine for them _and_ >>still have the whole thing easier to author, than what the hell is wrong >>with the W3C? > >Too Complex, or not precise enough? Too complex. >To answer to "what the hell is wrong with the W3C?". Nothing. Not in the >terms you mean, it's just reality check. We are not living in a perfect >world. We are in a situation where from a collective group, you want to >achieve something stable with people with different interests, needs, >cultures, etc. It's *just group life*. Some things just aren't best served by a committee. Specs I believe are one of them. >What makes a good specification is a work, we are trying to nail down for a >while in the QA Activity. It's not something easy to answer, and I wish we >had an answer. > >What is a specification? A specification is a document that describes a process or technology that is sufficiently precise enough that people can use the document to implement the process or technology in such a way that the desired output always flows from a given set of inputs. >How do you create a collective work? >How do you keep this work realistic in a consensus building? Usually with a single author. The American cliche of "Too many cooks in the kitchen" is actually founded in reality. Too many authors for a document ruin it. The trick is to have a single author's vision with people commenting on it and the primary author actively seeking suggestions on how to improve the specification. But always one author or a pair of well coordinated authors. >How do you preserve minimum interoperability? A person is capable of making an internally consistent concept with enough work, but given too many authors you generally end up with something that isn't consistent, but rather a hodgepodge of ideas. >How do you try to reach maximum interoperability? Many simple ideas are very extensible without additional constructs. It's usually over-specialization that ruins boxes you in. The base technique should always be to create abstracted constructs and specific constructs that are a collection of these abstracted constructs into something more usable. Float is a good example in CSS. What it really is a something that chops out a section of the flow, a positioning value and a display value (in this case block). >Many of the questions are trying to be addressed on the www-qa mailing list >for a long time, with or without success depending on the topics. The wiki >is also a repository to factorize ideas from people, feel free to edit it. > >http://esw.w3.org/topic/MeaningVsBehavior >http://esw.w3.org/topic/FormalLanguageVsProse >http://esw.w3.org/topic/ImplementationReport >http://esw.w3.org/topic/ExtensibilityGoodOrBad >http://esw.w3.org/topic/ErrorHandling >http://esw.w3.org/topic/TestableOrNot I'll take a look at these. Orion Adrian _________________________________________________________________ Check out MSN PC Safety & Security to help ensure your PC is protected and safe. http://specials.msn.com/msn/security.asp
Received on Tuesday, 13 April 2004 17:22:54 UTC