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

I did not reply immediately because I was running in a track meet.  I ran a
10 minute 12 second 2 miles!!  Not bad for a 38 year old man.  Not too far
off my best high school times.  Hope others are enjoying their weekend.


At 11:59 PM 1/4/2003 +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:
>> I remember you wrote in this thread that citing normative references
>> is very important.  Where is your normative reference which states
>> that specification _completely_ controls semantics??
>
>I have already replied to this twice, once in my last e-mail:
>
>   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Jan/0074.html
>
>...and once in the e-mail before that:
>
>   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Jan/0074.html



What part of "which states that specification _completely_ controls
semantics??" do you not understand??


>...and you _still_ haven't replied to the numerous arguments I made in
>the e-mail before _that_:
>
>   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Jan/0054.html
>
>...that were unrelated to semantics but covered the various other
>technical issues you brought up.


Until we resolve the fundamental issue of whether "specification
_completely_ controls semantics", then the other details are just
obfuscating the fundamental disagreement.


>You are now ignoring my arguments and simply replying as if I haven't
>replied to yours, even avoiding quoting my questions. 


Because I do not want to follow your past pattern in this thread of drawing
me into a detailed debate which has nothing to do with the fundamental
question above.


>Please don't let
>this thread become a farce.

Yes I wish you would address the fundamental challenge, which I will repeat is:

"Where is your normative reference which states that specification
_completely_ controls semantics??"


I will oblige you by refuting one of main points in last post, but I will
refuse to go back and forth on these tangential details until you address
the fundamental challenge above.


>> 3. XBL can most certainly change the implementation of HTML tags to
>> some thing which disagrees with specification
>
>How? You have yet to explain _how_ it can. Please could you give us
>some sample XBL which changes the meaning of an element?

This has been explained several times in this thread.  I will summarize.

XBL can bind new content at an existing or new tag using new CSS syntax
"bind".  This content can augment or completely replace the normal
implementation of the tag.  Since this content can be any content (markup,
scripting, events, style etc), then it can do a infinite range of
implementations.  Due to the nature of infinity, some of those
implementations will violate the HTML 4.01 spec.  Thus the Axiomatic Proof
I gave holds true that "specification does NOT _completely_ control
semantics (meaning)".  Refer back to the __ENTIRE___ Axiomatic Proof I
gave.  The nature of such a tri-part (3 points) proof is that it can not be
analyzed in parts.  It must be considered as a whole:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Jan/0073.html


The more interesting question is not whether my proof is correct, because
axiomatic proofs are self-evident.  The more interesting question is what
does is mean when semantics are NOT _controlled_ by specification??  I am
not asking for moral judgments.  The answer is quite simple.  Any
implementation which changes the semantics to voilate the specification is
simply not conformant.

Simple as that.

There is a big difference between what *IS* and what we *WANT*.

-Shelby Moore

Received on Saturday, 4 January 2003 19:38:15 UTC