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On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:35:01 +0200, Michael Ludwig wrote: > Browsers do not need to download anything they already have in > a local cache. They could add the important DTDs here: > > C:\temp :: dir "C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\res\dtd" /s /b > C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\res\dtd\mathml.dtd > C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\res\dtd\xhtml11.dtd > > People just need to agree on what's important. This seems to be an attitude common for the HTML-centered (is it appropriate to describe you so?); it seems to be the attitude of the WhatWG folks as well, so far as I'm understanding those bits that they've contributed to the namespaces discussion here, and that I've stumbled across otherwise. It's an odd attitude, to my mind. MathML, SVG, [pick-your-favorite] wouldn't exist unless the distributed authority mechanism (however clumsy, verbose, and annoying it is) of XML namespaces had not been available. They relied on independent groups being able to build momentum, first in a niche, and then more widely, at which point the browser vendors acknowledged the justice of including them. Even though this is the path travelled by all of the things that the HTML 5 folks are now including (well, apart from video: maybe instead of trying to work it out in committee, a distributed mechanism would lead to a solution there as well?), the working group seems to regard the idea of distributed authority antipathetically (or even to be forthrightly hostile to the idea). That suggests that the interesting new technologies will grow up outside the browser, to be brought in to HTML 6, or HTML 7 ... meanwhile, XML 1 + namespaces will continue to resist a full-scale revision to XML 2 (or even 1.1, q.v.) ... because the distributed authority mechanism does *enough* to encourage innovation, and to allow flexibility ... even in the HTML space, via XHTML. Is this driven by a desire to "control" something--innovation, flexibility, applications? (Mind you, I'm not suggesting that XML is free of "we must control" attitudes; see, for instance, W3C XML Schema, in which the collection of primitive types are all you get, unless you can convince the Schema WG to add *your* favorite unrelated primitive datatype to the collection). Amy! (with apologies to Michael Ludwig; the thought's been percolating, and his comment simply triggered this note in response)
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