- From: Joshua Allen <joshuaa@microsoft.com>
- Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 14:38:20 -0700
- To: "Jim Ley" <jim@jibbering.com>, <www-talk@w3.org>, <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>, "Marja-Riitta Koivunen" <marja@w3.org>
> robust way of doing it - it's a toy and has a poor UI - as I've said many > times today "I can't do UI". > I feel guilty now that Annotea has been looked down upon based on my > implementation, it was never serious, it's just my toy that normally Oy! I should have disclaimed that much better. In fact, I was quite impressed that someone had gotten an IE plugin working at all, especially given the fact that most open-source developers despise anything that Mom'n'pop use, and instead target arcane and "elite" platforms and languages. Another striking factor was that most open source developers just assume it is impossible to extend IE since they don't have source (and since Microsoft presumably is trying to lock everyone out, etc.), so it was refreshing to see that someone actually realized how simple it can be to add an extension. I think the plugin is an admirable piece of work, and your submitting it for others to look at and work with is even cooler. Your plugin is perhaps the *least* user-hostile element of the whole annotea project, because it actually targets a browser that normal people use. I was just saying that overall, it is still not quite enough. I don't think you would claim that it was even *intended* to be a complete competitor, so we were saying the same thing. My comments were in response to Dan's question about "what would stop annotea from gaining wide adoption." My response could be summarized in one sentence, "The annotea project seems to care more about the technologies than the user benefits, and is not leveraging its semantic web underpinnings in a way that provides a clear differentiating value from other solutions, therefore it will struggle." The main message I am trying to push is that publishing needs to be separated from querying, just like it is on WWW. I think I have gotten that point across and it's best for me to stop now, since I really never meant to disparage annotea or any of the plugins.
Received on Friday, 24 May 2002 17:38:53 UTC