RE: [xml-dev] Here's a good question

[Don Park <donpark@docuverse.com>]

> > Is it all Mike Champion's fault? :)
>
> Probably. If we just had more people like him to blame...

I'll have to take some of the blame.  Although I am well known for lack of
patience and tolerance for quality bullshed, I was right there while the
shed was being built and let everything happen as it did.  By the time I
joined, basic design direction have already been decided on, and being
'inside the house', so to speak, makes it more difficult to 'tear the house
down'.  All the complaints from outside about DOM was already in the minds
of everyone 'inside', yet the momentum and pressure to produce something was
tremendous and could not be overcome.

I remember James Clark making one last ditch effort with an alternative
design proposal, but the amount of time and work already invested into the
original design was hard to abandon, even if most felt the alternate
proposal was good.

Ultimately, it was the DOM requirements that neutered it.  Backward
compatibility, language independence, and wide range of applications are
nice on paper, but hard to design for.  We would have had better results if
we initially targeted just JavaScript and browser application.  We also
should have built more DOM applications instead of focusing only on DOM
implementation issues.  In this respect, W3C's Candidate Recommendation
phase should also require at least one or two applications to be written
before being raised to Proposed Recommendation status.

Best,

Don Park
Docuverse