Re: distinguishing Web Platform-oriented RECs from World Wide Web RECs.

Thanks Dan - we'd love to follow up more on this.  Apparently this mailing
list is mainly defunct at this point and TAG members prefer GitHub, so this
is now over in https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1202 - we'd
love to discuss more

On Sun, Mar 22, 2026 at 5:46 PM Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 at 22:10, Brian Kardell <bkardell@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Recently there was a request to "Reconsider W3C Recommendation status of
>> XSLT 2.0 and XSLT 3.0" (see
>> https://github.com/w3ctag/obsoletion/issues/10).
>>
>> In the process Dan Brickley made what I thought was an interesting
>> comment:
>>
>> I take this as evidence in favour of distinguishing 'Web Platform'
>>> -oriented RECs from 'World Wide Web' RECs.
>>
>>
>>
>>> The former is concerned heavily with implementability, usability,
>>> coherent design, attack surface and technical debt issues. The latter is
>>> humanity's planet-wide shared memory. Once deployed, its data formats do
>>> not really ever go away, and thoughtful specs need to respect this reality.
>>> Many W3C efforts have aspects of both flavour of web standard, but are
>>> often closer to one cluster.
>>
>>
>> XSLT appears for now to be primarily a 'World Wide Web' standard, even if
>>> 0.02% of page loads is still a significant number for the parties trying to
>>> use those pages. XSLT will also continue chugging away in the background,
>>> unseen but enabling many other page views.
>>
>>
>> I don't want to reopen this github issue, but it is worth trying to come
>>> up with a non-polarizing framing for where things like XSLT fit in the web
>>> standards landscape, and how W3C handles its ageing XML portfolio.
>>
>>
>> (see
>> https://github.com/w3ctag/obsoletion/issues/10#issuecomment-3637735401)
>>
>> I think this is an especially interesting point when we also consider
>> that we have a mix of other things deployed in the world too, which aren't
>> just in the browser: Web Views (and embedded views), IWAs, miniapps and so
>> on... It would be interesting to see if there are non-polarizing (maybe
>> more importantly some potentially helpful) ways to define these things...
>>
>
> Thanks. I should write this up properly.  We are im strange and changing
> times, and those can put pressure on established technologies to unpack and
> be explicit about things that are often kind of lumped together. For years
> everyone knew what “watching television” meant, even as cable, satellite,
> dvds and so on arrived. Now that staring at a painted wall (projection…) or
> a wristwatch, or a canvas in a webxr headset are also kind of “tv”,
> conversations about TV can’t take old definitions for granted. I think
> we’re headed there rapidly with “web” too.
>
> Dan
>
> ps.
> Was ftp://ftp.example.net/pub/papers/1988/doe.j.foo.ps a web page before
> the web was created? There certainly were huge collections of documents and
> software on ftp sites, and mentions of them posted to mailing lists, usenet
> news etc., just without compact urls. This is kind of a goofy example but
> it also goes to the heart of the matter…
>
> We talk about “the web” as if it were an inspectable entity, when it is
> something more like a set of shared practices you can place on a spectrum.
> At one end of the spectrum is a thing so daunting and complex that is costs
> 100s of millions of dollars to implement. At the other is something so
> simple and pluralistic that it sort of existed before it was named, and
> which could outlive HTML and HTTP just as it survived and encompasses
> Flash, Silverlight, Java applets, SGML, Postscript and PDF.
>
>
>
>
>> --
>> Brian Kardell :: @briankardell :: bkardell.com
>>
>

-- 
Brian Kardell :: @briankardell :: bkardell.com