Re: XBL is (mostly) W3C redundant, and CSS is wrong W3C layer for semantic behavior *markup*

At 08:25 AM 12/27/2002 +0100, Daniel Glazman wrote:
>> Thus you are biased.  There is a saying, "Too deep in the forest to see 
>beyond
>> the trees...".
>
>Well, since you did know what means "anonymous content" even if you
>quoted the XBL spec, I gues you are yourself not deep enough in the
>forest and then biased even more than I am.


Again you think you know what I think based on email.  That is not very
smart given the well known limitations of the linear (non-interactive)
nature of email.

I simply asked for your definition (which you did not answer).  That did
not mean that I did not already have my own interpretation.  My
interpretation was precisely as XBL spec defines it, as I followed up after
dinner last night:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2002Dec/0190.html

In short, anonymous content is another way of saying that the
implementation of an extensible abstract markup is orthogonal.  Go back and
re-read my very first post that started this thread.  I wrote that.

Unfortunately, you do not seem willing to debate the technical points.


>> Are you proud of how stable and successful Netscape products are, especially
>> Action Sheets and NS4.7?  I'd like to suggest a possible correlation between
>
>NS4.7 is an old product. Don't compare a Cugnot's Fardier and a Ferrari
>please.
>And Action Sheets were never implemented, AFAIK. They were dropped in
>favor of XBL.


Everyone deserves infinite chances to improve.  Believe it or not, I am a
very nice person.  My point is that quoting those as your basis for
expertise has to be weighed in terms of past performance.  Note I did not
come here quoting my experience, which is filled with major commercial
success stories.  I want the discussion to be weighted on the technical
merits.  It is less productive to obfuscate with mostly irrelevant info.

Also note that your first post in thread I started, was filled with snide
remarks.  I think you were insinuating superiority.



>> "reinventing the wheel" (non-incremental, non-modular design) to how brittle
>> and buggy Netscape (and Mozilla) products have historically been (and
perhaps
>> continue to be).  I am not just referring to the buggy and extremely late
>> implementation, or the market failure, but also to a possible "spagetti" 
>> philosophy of design.
>
>No comment about the stability and user-friendliness of Cool Page.


Nice insinuation about something you know nothing about.  Do you think this
sort of response is helping you appear knowledgeable and technically accurate?

YOU DIGRESSED: Cool Page is the most bug-free product I have ever worked
on.  You'd be lucky to find 10 minor bugs in a week of using it, and none
of them are crash bugs.  The only time it crashes (afaik given 1000s of
user support emails) is when Windows is corrupted, which is always solved
by reinstalling Windows.

As for user-friendliness, the people who are extreme novices or who do not
have a lot of time to get into web page authoring (which is our target
market), rave about the user-friendliness.  Cool Page is one of the top 3
shareware pixel-perfect editors in the world.  It is also very profitable.

http://guestbook.sparklit.com/entries?gbID=61503&gbaction=viewResponses

23,000+ web sites made with Cool Page:
http://www.altavista.com/web/results?pg=q&kl=XX&q=link%3A3dize.com

No doubt that Cool Page sucks for people knowledgeable about markup and
other large portions of the authoring market.  Nevertheless, I personally
earn about $300K per year on Cool Page alone (not counting my other
businesses DownloadFAST.com, etc).


[...]

>As I said Bugzilla bug 47066 is a specific example.


And you have NOT responded to my specific criticisms of that example.



>> And he has at most 16 years of design experience to compare to.  Sometimes 
>the
>
>No. But I have.


So do I.



>> Whether is is "trivial" for you has no bearing on the issues I raised.
>
>Pfff.


Other things might be trivial for me.  What does that mean in terms of
comparing technologies?

Are you frustrated and burned out (is "Pfff" like blowing air when one is
disgusted)?


[...]

>So you tested a pre-1.0 version only and complain ? Get yourself a 1.2.


I think that was 2 years after Mozilla had promised 1.0


>I never saw your code contribution to bug 47066, the only old bug on 
>this topic. So let's be more precise: please give me the bug number 
>where you attached that code. When did you attach it ?


Some years ago, I made a contribution of source code and algorithm to be
added to Image library for fast bilinear resampling so that images could be
rendered more accurately (reduced aliasing) when resized.  However, after
many "snide" treatments from people with @mozilla email addresses (similar
to your post here), I requested that all my contributions (which had not
been used or acted any way) be removed from bugzilla.  I have no desire to
go search and see if it is still there.


>I found no occurence of your email address in the WHOLE Bugzilla
>database and the only person who ever talked of CoolPage there
>is Matthew Bealey.


Good.  They honored my request.  Sincerely, thanks for checking that for me.


[...]

>> Everything in CSS is closer (less abstracted) from presentation than markup
>> is.  It is designed to be an othogonal layer, not one interleaved with
markup
>> like "spagetti".
>
>Why do you think we removed the name CSS from the title of the Selectors
>Module ? You totally miss the point.


Maybe I did and maybe I did not.  Let's proceed on technical discussion.


>> Second, CSS is an abbreviation for "Cascading Style Sheets".
>
>Thanks for reminding us.


You wrote, "you think CSS is a language only for style".


>> That is three different discussions.  First, using CSS to bind markup 
>makes CSS
>> not orthogonal to markup.  Second, inheriting style from the abstract markup
>
>Geez, did you read me well ? The binding declaration is added to the CSS
>instances but is not a CSS property. It's a CSS-alike property and we
>allow to merge instances for simplicity.


Please define "instances" in CSS??

I have searched the TOC and checked the index and I do not find any
definition for "instance" in CSS2.

Also I do not think what you call it, changes the fact that it is embedded
in a CSS style sheet.

Even if we remove this problem by clarification or putting the binding
declaration some where else, it doesn't change my point that XBL is mostly
W3C redundant.  And you haven't addressed my other criticisms of your example.



>> Absolutely false.
>> 
>> A presentation (rendering) layer may not support CSS at all.  CSS are just
>> "hints" to the presentation layer.  If you assume anything about CSS, then 
>you
>> are presentation dependent.
>
>You got me wrong. I never said that a rendering engine needs CSS.


You wrote, "It depends on a style declaration, hard-coded or declarative,
anyway."


>> Why should I invest in a Mozilla technology?  I'd rather leverage W3C
>> technologies.
>
>That one is excellent. I save it for future use. Btw, I guess you just
>entered the "troller" category.

I assume you are insinuating that you will wait to attack me personally in
future (as if my personal issues have anything to do with technical
standards issues).  You are such a nice person.

You entered "troller" with your opening snide response to my original civil
post, which begged explicitly for civil responses on technical debate.

You based your superiority on your Mozilla background.  You asked to have
the debate on that level.

I have offered to return it to a technical merits debate.  You have
answered none of the technical criticisms of your example.  Your choice.


-Shelby Moore

Received on Friday, 27 December 2002 15:10:54 UTC