At 11:54 PM 11/19/2002 +, Robert O'Connor wrote:
On 19 Nov 2002 at 15:22, Fringe Ryder wrote:
> At 10:53 PM 11/19/2002 +, Robert O'Connor wrote:
> >On 18 Nov 2002 at 21:43, Laurens M. Fridael wrote:
> > > complying with W3C standards is hardly a priority or
> > > even a consideration.
> >
> >I would tend to differ on that point.
> >
> >Over the next few years, Plucker is going to become the dominant force as
> >it continues to
> >mature and the commercial alternatives wither. AvantGo, in particular is
> >on the downgrade, with
> >a delisted stock, layoffs, CEO resignations, and sagging sales.
> >
> >As Plucker continues to rise, I would offer that Plucker chooses the best
> >practices, in the
> >form of documented W3C and ISO standards, instead of picking up the bad
> >practices of the
> >withering commercial off-line browsers.
>
> Hmm... what about those of us who want the tool to work in as many
cases as
> easily-possible, rather than being holier-than-thou and refusing to
work on
> sites because they have innocuously-broken code?
>
> (This doesn't refer to the "back" functionality; I don't care about
> that. I use Plucker for content, not for buttons. It just refers to the
> board-mentality that Plucker should be less tolerant of errors than any
> browser, instead actively refusing to touch sites with even the most minor
> of transgressions.)
*I* am not going to:
(a) work on crap non-standard proprietary non-HTML.
(b) offer support on mailing lists on how to use crap non-standard
proprietary
non-HTML.
(c) maintain the extra work to maintain compatibility of crap non-standard
proprietary non-HTML, as they change underfoot since they aren't standard.
(d) document them all and how to make them work.
(e) maintain the docs.
Robert, I'm not clear that you've done any parser work anyhow; I don't
expect you to work on it. You did the Desktop, which is also extremely
important and impressive, and very content-agnostic. But do you notice any
prejudicial tone in your message?
"crap non-standard proprietary non-HTML"
Nobody asked for support of that specifically. Sure, some "non-standard"
HTML, depending on whose standard (W3 or the real world/market.) Sure,
some crappy HTML that would have been standard if not for the fact that a
color (to use your example) wound up not in the standard or a tag got
misused in a common fashion. Certainly not any "non-HTML", unless you
define "non-HTML" the way David does, as disqualifying a document that has
a single malformed comment tag, for example.
I have made several parser changes recently, and would consider doing some
to expand Plucker's usefulness should a common not-quite-standard usage be
interfering broadly with usage. Things that are perhaps supported by all
four major browsers we might want to consider. Purity that substantially
reduces functionality is useless.
Which is nice, but currently (for me) academic. No such features are
annoying me. I never noticed the example you used, the non-implemented
color code, perhaps due to a certain level of color blindness. I don't use
"back" buttons; the browser's history is good enough for me since it DOES
take me back where I came from. And I have scripting (and cookies
generally) disabled in my browser (Opera), so I don't tend to see sites
that require them and would fail in Plucker. But the philosophy remains
none-the-less: I want Plucker to be useful more than I want it to be an
arrogantly useless tribute to a standards body.
On the bright side, right now it's both a tribute to a standards body AND
useful, at least to me. But if we should have to pick a direction in the
future, I vote "useful." And, as long as nobody screams too loudly, I'll
code it too.
-Tony McNamara-
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