- From: Jesse McCarthy <mccarthy36@earthlink.net>
- Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 18:40:13 -0400
- To: www-style@w3.org
Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net> wrote on 10/24/01 5:59:31 PM: >* Jesse McCarthy wrote: >>>>[specifications hard to read for beginners] >>>[beginners are not specification's target group] > >>Could you please clarify that statement; who is supposedly able to use the >>specifications to author the "tutorials, books, guides", etc.? > >Non-beginners, people who do understand the specification and have >decent writing skills. > >>Are you saying that an author that also has specialized knowledge, e.g. >>of common typography, would be required to translate the specification >>into a form suitable for authors in general? > >No, not required, but it would certainly help beginners. Ok, that's very much different from what you said earlier: [ Specifications aren't generally written for users or authors in this case...Developers should refer to secondary materials like tutorials, books, guides, whatever if they want to learn CSS, specifications cannot teach authors to use technologies described therin, at least not beyond a certain level of verbosity. ] I hardly see "author" or "developer" as a synonym for "beginner". I am an author, or developer, or whatever you want to call me. I am also a non- beginner, do understand the specification (when it's coherent -- which, unfortunately, is less pervasively than it should be), and probably even have decent writing skills. And I'm all too familiar with the books and articles written by so called "experts", who deign, for a moment, to step down from their ivory tower to make pompous pronouncements and receive accolades from the hapless developers, helpless to comprehend anything without their divine intervention. No, I prefer to go to the source. If I can get a job in this industry soon enough to keep me involved, I plan to become involved in the development of some of these technologies, e.g. HTML, CSS, to the extent that I can. Obviously the people who have been doing it up till now have too often been asleep at the wheel. Either that or they are overwhelmed and need qualified assistance.
Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2001 18:58:52 UTC