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- From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
- To: <xml-dev@XML.ORG>
- Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 08:46:35 -0400
At 10:01 AM 7/10/00 +1000, James Robertson wrote:
>I fully support the concept of "pure research". Absolutely
>invaluable, if we are to meet future, unknown, requirements.
>
>But that is not what we are doing here.
>
>We are creating _standards_.
>
>They do not innovate, they set in stone the best concepts
>that have been invented so far, so everyone can
>talk the same language.
>
>But, to my mind, we are now well into uncharted
>territory. Why then are we still creating standards?
I think this may have something to do with various perceptions of what
exactly the W3C does. A lot of us (especially those of us from HTML, where
the W3C rec is the standard, inasmuch as one is followed) see the W3C as
creating standards we can use to ensure interoperability and enjoy new
features.
The W3C itself seems to take a more modest view (while certainly benefiting
from and occasionally participating in the larger 'standards' view). In
this perspective, the W3C is advanced research-and-development, moving out
ahead of the implementation curve, and creating only 'recommendations' for
developers, not standards. They _want_ to be in uncharted territory, to
some extent at least, from this perspective.
If we all treated the W3C's technology as experimental, their moves might
not be seen as problematic. Unfortunately, lots of people don't, and there
are plenty of businesses betting their fortune on XML 1.0 and its
supporting standards.
I'd love to see some way of preserving the W3C's potential as an incubator
for wild new infrastructures while making clear that some of their
infrastructures are in fact de facto standards. Right now, it seems that
the only way to do that is to create things like 'candidate
recommendation', which delay the overall process and leave a lot of folks
deeply impatient.
Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books
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