Re: Web Architecture, 'XML Autonomy'

> At 11:58 AM 5/23/00 -0400, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
> >The "Web Architecture" is a set of invariants, a set of assumptions
> >which one can distill from the decisions which have been made 
> >historically and which we find have to be assumed implicitly within
> >the web development commuity. My personal attempt represent these is
> >at http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Architecture and has been for 10
> >years. [...] The architecture is not unquestionable.
> >But some of it is the assumption on which people joined the
> >consortium.  WhatI would like is (current personal thinking) was
> >an ethos in which some documents represened the best stab at
> >capturing the nominal important invariants at any one point, and a
> >group within W3C or near neighbors would be expected to be aware
> >of it and, if it wanted to go outside it, to negotiate it in a wider
> context than just itself

Surely it cannot be that W3C recommendations, at least some of which
are intended to be cited as "normative", are all dependent for their
interpretation and implementation on documents derived from such an
informal process?

And surely it cannot be the case that the "assumptions" people make
when they join the W3C should affect the plain meaning of published
recommendations? 

If such is in fact the case, shouldn't current W3C Recommendations be
amended to reflect the "super-normative" status of the "Web
Architecture"?

Sam Hunting




=====
<? "To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life."
    -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations ?>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites.
http://invites.yahoo.com/

Received on Wednesday, 24 May 2000 14:41:03 UTC