Subject: Some heartening comments from the trenches...
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 03:17:43 -0400
From: "Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>
Messages like the following make much of the work seem
worth it...
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Message-Id: <199608271549.IAA18610@server.livingston.com>
Subject: onMouseOver in Cougar. (fwd)
To: www-html@w3.org
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 08:49:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: MegaZone <megazone@livingston.com>
Once upon a time Matthew James Marnell shaped the electrons to say...
>bring itself to use the TITLE attrib, or because they hold enough
>sway with W3C to get just about anything, including idiotic,
>redundant Java/JavaScript attribs and tags added to HTML, or a
>combination of both?
Neither - it is because TITLE CANNOT DO what onMouseOver does. How do you
propose TITLE change the text in a TEXTAREA box? That is an extremely
simple example. onMouseOver is a generic event handler - that it calls is
up to the programmer. Some people use it to change the status display, but
that is just one simple use.
If you think onMouseOver is redundant I challenge you to find any existing
HTML tags that allow for the same features - ie, a tag that can call any
arbitrary JavaScript or Java construct.
>Or, on the same vein, is the only reason for the W3C's existance
>to take large amounts of money from large corporations in order
>to validate Netscape own private brand of HTML? Or better yet,
You obviously have not followed anything the W3C has done. This question
is so ill-informed that I don't know where to start.
Have you even bothered to look at the working group data on the W3C site?
Where do you think <OBJECT> and CSS1 come from any way? Perhaps you aren't
aware that the W3C has rejected many Netscape inventions in favor of
inventions by other firms or their own working groups - or the IETF, as in
RFC 1942, the full table draft.
>Jaw wagging, but in the end, 90% of conversations including
>the keywords HTML and the "WWW Consortium" end up back at
>gaining Netscape tags validity, or maybe it's just because
This is just bullshit.
>they're the only company that's part of the W3C that insists,
>on a daily basis, of painting so far outside the lines.
And Microsoft doesn't? They are part of the W3C and have invented a great
number of MSIE tags.
Current examples - The W3C refused to put BLINK in a standard. They only
allowed CENTER with some major modifications to its behavior - it is now
just an alias for <DIV ALIGN=CENTER> and restricted to use as DIV is.
FRAMES are not in Cougar because they are debating heavily a final standard
for them, partially because of dissatisfaction with the NS and MS tags. I'm
sure many of their tags will be in there due to weight of use, but expect
changes and expansion. Many of the 'features' Netscape allows in association
with tables violate SGML and are not in 3.2 nor in RFC 1942 (like HEADER
markup in the CAPTION, etc). EMBED is not in any standard or proposed
standard from the W3C and is not likely to be as they have <OBJECT> which
is a superset of tags like IMG, EMBED and APPLET.
How about the Arena and Amaya browsers from the W3C that can be used for
testing advanced features MS and NS have yet to use. Or the Jigsaw server
that is a testbed for next-gen server standards.
The entirer internationalization push is driven by the W3C, and they coordinate
efforts to improve image utilization on the web with content negotiaion and
new image types (like PNG). The W3C has done a great deal of work on font
distribution via the WWW - far beyond the MS FONT FACE tags or even CSS1
presentaion markup. The W3C has served as a vital coordination center for
the many companies working on this issue, helping to design a standard system
instead of having Apple, MS, Adobe, and NS all doing their own thing. We
are heading to a time when authors can use custom fonts and the browser will
download them with the document for viewing, and the W3C will be in large
part responsible for such capability.
There is also a group in the W3C working on the steady migration of the WWW
to a true SGML environment. Nearly all of the experts agree that it is
inevitable, but the W3C is working to make happen sooner rather than later -
and to make it happen smoothly.
They also work on methods of making the WWW accessable to people with
disabilities, they fight for the user in privacy concerns, the W3C is a
focal point for the development and testing of security systems...
I could go on and on...
The very fact that you ask such a question indicates that you haven't bothered
to do any real research on your own. Just for starters I suggest reading
the W3C web at <<http://www.w3.org/>
- -MZ
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