At 11:08 AM 5/29/2000 +0300, you wrote: >Joseph Solbrig wrote: > >> Now, the one reason that I'd like folks to notice this is that the system >> will only work if a single interactivity language/client system becomes >> standard. > >This doesn't seem likely to happen, and even if it starts out that way in >the long run it just won't happen. Consider HTTP - in the beginning, all it >served was HTML that was viewed through a browser. But now, with CGI (the >main reason HTTP is so popular) and XML-RPC and SOAP, which are RPC >mechanisms, or even rendering XML with CSS as the newer browsers do, HTTP is >becoming a lot more than just a mechanism for publishing web pages. >
I'm not sure how HTTP is a exception here. As far as I understand it, it is a standard that has stayed the same. It was initially used for one thing and now is also being used for the other things - COOL. The value in HTTP being spread as a single standard can be seen exactly by the way that it now used for other things. But standards mutating isn't a problem for me. HTML would be a better model in my mind for a standard that has mutated over time while still remaining useful. The nice thing about HTML is that when browsers are loose in their rendering of HTML, many standards can partially co-exist. This would be my candidate for "exception that proves the rule" - sure it has changed, but the fact that it existed in the first place, HTML was how you viewed web pages, made the web possible. If multiple word processor-type formats each were being propagated at the start, all the other aspects of the web would have been slow in coming, the web would not have grown in size, and so-forth - (just look at the disagreements over the pdf files attached to documents on this list to see how file-format questions don't automatically work themselves out over time). I should clarify/restate my argument as being for propagating a single standard, not enforcing or expecting exact adhesion, but propagating the standard so that it is a base that other things can count on (I bet that there are a thousand times more HTML files point to PDF files than vice-versa). And I suppose I am proposing making my language/application a "standard to propagate" for expressing compound documents, directories and similar item - it would analogous to HTML as a loose standard not formally part of freenet. I wasn't very clear about this distinction in the above statement, I'll admit. If folks want, I could write up a more formal statement of this - I did post an over-view of this idea a couple of weeks ago. It was the first thing that I sent to the list so perhaps I should apologize for "coming strong immediately." Questions, comments, etc, welcome. Joe _______________________________________________ Freenet-dev mailing list Freenet-dev at lists.sourceforge.net http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/freenet-dev
