[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
> "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com> wrote:
> | Arjun Ray writes:
>
> |> More Tag Soup. They want to command the client: Do This And Then
> |> Do That.
>
> | Even for me, that's far too bleak. The developers I've found
> | who've hit HTML's limitations have generally found themselves
> | forced to code more elegantly, not simply pile on features.
>
> Glad to hear it, but I see no evidence of this.
I think we must hang out with completely different communities, then.
As I come from the HTML side and you come from the SGML side, this is
unsurprising.
> | [...] I find a lot of developers would prefer to clean up their HTML
> | in order to apply various tools to it (like CSS and scripting)
>
> IOW, in order to command Do This And Then Do That, more um
effectively.
You can belittle it like that if you like, but I'd suggest that in the
process they develop a much firmer grasp of document and information
structures.
> | than shift completely away from the document-based approach.
>
> IMHO, the developers who think in terms of documents are a vanishingly
> small minority. For most of them, the word 'document' figures in
> their working lexicon only as the prefix on '.write()'.
Perhaps, but I'm afraid I can say very similar things about most XML
development... (not that that will soothe you!)
> | You may not be fond of CSS and scripting, but the process does force
> | Web developers to think about what they're doing and why.
>
> Does this explain px-fontsizing fliegendreck and "javascript:" URLs?
No - it explains the developers who argue against those things on a
regular basis. It still might not meet your visions of document
nirvana, but you might try visiting:
http://alistapart.com/index.html
or subscribing to lists like webdesign-l@hesketh.com and monitoring for
a while. These issues do come up on a regular basis and best practices
likely flow the direction you'd like.
I can't say that everyone cares to think as hard as these folks, but
there definitely is brain activity in the Web development community.
> | There is a chance for developers to move from Tag Soup to [a] more
> | systematic approach, but it does help to provide them with reasons
> | and accessible toolkits.
>
> When the end result is something for a Tag Soup processor? Virtue
> may be its own reward, but that isn't the apppropriate banality.
> More like: no silk purses from sows' ears.
If you don't like the processors out there, I'd suggest writing one.
Mozilla's already gone pretty well beyond Tag Soup processing IMHO, and
Opera seems to be heading a similar route. That other browser, well,
there's not much we can do about that one.
-------------
Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
http://simonstl.com may be my URI
http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI
urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether
|
