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On Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:03:03 +0200, Michael Ludwig wrote: > Amelia A Lewis schrieb am 25.08.2009 um 17:24:46 (-0400): >> 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?) > > I don't think so :-) I don't really understand this HTML/XML discussion. > Seems somehow political to me. I guess I'd have to be following for a > longer time in order to understand. And I haven't followed the new HTML > movement at all. I don't know what they want. > > So unfortunately, I didn't understand your strategic observations on > HTML and XML either. Maybe it's some kind of Bolshevik-Menshevik > conflict? Oops! Then please accept my apologies. Although ... since my academic training was in Soviet History, I'm utterly *charmed* that you should liken this to the split in the social democratic movement in Russia. :-) HTML, in all revisions to date, includes a "standard" (actually, a W3C Recommendation, which is a nice distinction), and browser extensions. XML was designed (this from the cheap seats; I didn't get involved until after the hard work had been done) for extensibility (although 1.0 did *not* include the notion of how to distribute authority--that was acknowledged, in the reservation of ":" in names, but was only achieved via the "namespaces in XML" specification, which unfortunately was not and is not particularly compatible with DTD as defined in XML 1.0). HTML is consequently a bit like freedom of the press (prior to the explosion of web publication): if you're rich enough to own a press, you can print what you like on it. Without suggesting conspiracy, anyone rich enough, or influential enough, to own a press or control the direction of the development of a browser with significant market share, is going to share quite a number of goals, assumptions, even prejudices, with other such owners/controllers. The pressures that influence a person, or corporation, that achieves that level of "influence" tends to produce, in those persons, a similarity of mindset. MathML and ChemistryML are examples of academic efforts (a world apart from the world of corporations funding browser development) that have made a clear space for themselves. SVG was the pet project of graphics geeks ... again, not folks who have ended up setting the direction for browser development. When authority is distributed, passion and utility become valued of themselves. The passion of the committers, the utility of their product. It's unusual, outside the XML world, to see "passion" and "utility" coupled with "specification". In the XML world, it's almost usual. There are personality oddities (I'm one of them) who write specifications for *fun*, and who care about them deeply, and who are willing to argue with anyone else who displays *passion* about whether changes really are improvements. XML (+namespaces) has that. HTML does not. Instead, it has browser vendors. I happen to admire Google, and it's "do no evil" principle, but "do no evil" != "do good." It's not so much political, it's just that the HTML specification (regardless of version, and excepting XHTML) does not provide a way for passionate specification geeks to pound out an interchange format in dad's garage (on his automotive computer?) and see it adopted via contributed code. Contributed code *can* do so such specifications in an environment that promotes distributed authority. > I read your gHorribleKludge article :-) [1] *laugh* gDay, mate! > No offense taken at all. (I always hope my comments trigger insightful > replies. Just sometimes, like now, I lack the background necessary to > understand.) Does this help, I hope? Amy!
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