Re: Web Philosophy

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 12:49 PM 3/27/01 -0500, Ann Navarro wrote:
>At 12:12 PM 3/27/01, Ronald Bourret wrote:
> >(b) have enough time to contribute at the level of a WG member,
> >(c) have enough money to attend (flight, hotel, etc.) the WG meetings.
>
>Ok, but if you don't have (b) and (c) available, how do you expect to be
>able to participate? At what level?

I think OASIS technical committees require one phone call a month, and the 
rest can be electronic.

XSchema/DDML (which Ron and I worked on) was built entirely on electronic 
discussion.  I didn't meet my fellow editors (or even hear their voices) 
until well after the spec went to the W3C.  Although I'm aware that 
XSchema/DDML wasn't a roaring success commercially, I think it (and SAX, 
and now RDDL) demonstrate that it's possible to proceed in a variety of 
lower-impact ways.

XSchema also benefited substantially from late input from a number of 
people who hadn't participated earlier in the process.  Full-time 
participation wasn't necessary to make critical contributions.


Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly and Associates
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books