Re: new feature request

Hi, David, Tab, and others–

Now that tempers seem to have cooled…

I was disappointed by how you approached this topic.

Tab, rather than take a few minutes to reassure David that we are not 
dropping declarative animation (or even animation elements), you made a 
misleading statement that implied that Chrome's support was being 
removed, rather than simply using a different mechanism. Perhaps you 
didn't intend to fan the flames, but you could have been more diplomatic.

David, rather than ask for clarification, you jumped to the worst 
possible conclusion (despite past indications on this list and in SVG 
specs about this topic), and chose instead to directly insult and 
disparage the SVG WG, SVG implementers, and some in the SVG community 
who do not share your specific priorities for SVG. This escalation was 
not only unnecessary and out of proportion, but also counter-productive. 
It leads others, including browser implementers, to be less receptive to 
your suggestions.

In your own ways, each of you chose to make the SVG WG mailing list a 
less inviting forum for us all to discuss our different visions for SVG, 
and mislead others into rash and incorrect conclusions. This is a place 
of work, and such behavior is not appropriate for a workplace environment.

I respect you each for your technical prowess, and for your dedication 
to improve SVG.

But technical competence is only one of the 3 criteria for participation 
in the W3C Process document [1] (this has remained a constant [2]). The 
other two are:
* The ability to act fairly
* Social competence in one's role

We are all genuinely trying to look after the interests of the larger 
SVG community, and both the SVG WG and many in the community are 
discouraged by posts with a dismissive or negative tone.


I'm asking each of you to be more thoughtful and respectful on this list 
in the future. I know that tempers can flare (it happens to me as well), 
but if you take some time to calm down before sending a hasty response, 
and reread the other's post to make sure you understood it correctly, I 
think the outcome will be better.

You're both extremely valuable members of the SVG community, and I want 
you both to keep contributing; but there aren't lives at stake here, so 
there's no reason we can't keep it enjoyable for everyone.


[1] http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#ParticipationCriteria
[2] 
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Process-19991111/background.html#ParticipationCriteria

Regards–
–Doug

On 3/16/15 10:15 PM, David Dailey wrote:
> Microsoft's refusal was years ago and there are several indications
> that they have since reconsidered, at least two of which have been
> posted to this group. Chris Lilley posted one. I posted another.
>
> Undoing specs that are 15 years old, applications based on those
> specs and documentation built on those specs seems not just
> unconscionable but malicious. There used to be a silly Apple/Google
> mantra called "don't break the web." I guess the whole pretense of
> making things interoperable and standardized has been abandoned in
> favor of laissez faire capitalism. What a grand charade the standards
> process has been!
>
> I have witnessed progressive cross-browser degradation of
> standards-compliant SVG code over 6 years now. I am talking about
> hundreds and hundreds of tests that used to be both standards
> compliant and working consistently in all relevant browsers. The life
> of authors has not been improved.
>
> I am not alone in these thoughts, btw. The discontent among the
> authoring community is, I would claim, widespread.
>
> As is often the case in debates hosted at WG's the lone dissenter is
> outshouted, and reason does not prevail. That CSS animation is
> showing greater adoption than SMIL is no surprise given the inertia
> of HTML. The purposes of HTML (big letter T for text) and SVG (big
> letter G for graphics) are intrinsically different. What is
> presentation in CSS is semantic in SVG. The folks who don't realize
> this appear to be leading the initiative toward a lemming-cliff.
> Intense discouragement among the advocates of a technology is not
> necessarily in the best long term interest of the web, nor of the
> W3C. Building specs that attract early adopters and then pulling rugs
> out from under those same adopters is clearly a way to promote
> dissent rather than to build community.
>
> David Dailey PhD Professor of Mathematics, Computer Science and
> Psychology author of two books on SVG including one hosted by W3C and
> extremely frustrated
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Tab Atkins Jr.
> [mailto:jackalmage@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, March 16, 2015 6:22 PM
> To: ddailey Cc: Philip Rogers; Dirk Schulze; Thomas O Smailus; Boris
> Zbarsky; www-svg Subject: Re: new feature request
>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 12:51 PM,  <ddailey@zoominternet.net> wrote:
>> Just how and why are people dropping SMIL? Where does the formal
>> objection get lodged?
>>
>> I cannot think of anything more dramatically incorrect to do.
>>
>> Clearly some views of the future of SVG are inconsistent with
>> others.
>>
>> I cannot make an objection to such folly strongly worded enough.
>
> Microsoft has publicly refused to implement SMIL, and has persisted
> in this.  Chrome is dropping native SMIL support and replacing it
> with browser-JS that reimplements in with Web Animations.
>
> ~TJ
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 24 March 2015 06:00:08 UTC