- From: Sandy Moss <sandylmoss@yahoo.com>
- Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2003 22:00:10 -0800 (PST)
- To: www-style@w3.org
Greetings. My name is Sandy Rubenstein. I work for a Fortune 500 company based out of St. Louis that is working on deploying a content management system. I am part of a small team tasked with preparing a whitepaper about the possible technologies we could use in this effort. I have long been a lurker on these lists, but what drew me from "hiding" was the fascinating issue you all are now discussing. It is one that my coworkers and I have debated at length. In fact, we have even researched XBL as a possible solution. We eventually came to agree, after weeks of study and consultations with some renowned experts (not Tim Berners-Lee, but some of his associates), that the issue of semantics is /not/ orthgonal to the issue of implementation. We have normative and indeed axiomatic evidence of this: 1. Tim Berners-Lee has stated, in no uncertain terms, that the semantics of a specification should not and indeed _cannot_ be orthgonal to the implementation. If they were, some of the world's most popular web languages would be unsubstantiated. This is inconceivable. 2. If we assume for the sake of argument that semantics are _not_ completely controlled by specifications, then user agents would have at least partial normative control. This would probably lead to the orthogonal (if not direct) deterioration of the web, which is equally inconceivable. 3. This is all tangential to the real issue at hand anyway, and that is: does XBL even change tag semantics? Perhaps superficially, but a graphical comparison of the language to others (CSS, Delphi, etc.) reveals an axiomatic TSGR[1] of no more than 20-30%. This would seem to indicate, unless anyone has a more normative source, that semantic metamorphosis in XBL is negligible at best. I have not seen anything on this list, other than some irrelevant opinions and other intangibles, that can emphatically refute any of the points above. While the existence of such proof is not inconceivable, it certainly hasn't been brought to this list's attention. As a side note, my coworkers and I are rather disheartened at the puerile behavior on this board as of late. We are all experts here and are merely debating some finer nuances of language development. Let's please stick to the issues. Sandy L. Moss [1] Tag Semantics Change Rate __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Received on Sunday, 5 January 2003 01:00:11 UTC