Eric Hughes flames away without first reading: Eric, read more, flame less, you might learn something.
How many times will there remain the confusion between what is achievably optimal and what is permitted?
From: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)
Now plainly they should listen very carefully to what the guys at CERN say about SGML tags, but as far as I can see, the groups that you want them to take consensus with, have no standing in this matter.
This is all very Libertarianly Correct, certainly, but it may also be downright stupid.
In future Eric, pleas read before flaming. I posted a lengthy explanation of why it was counter productive to take consensus with those who are lagging. Here follows the material, that you apparently deleted without reading: ------------ Open standards are great, but a camel is a horse designed by a committee. CERN came down from the mountain top, and decreed what HTML and HTTP should be, and that was a truly open and successful standard. Very few such standards have emerged from comittees. If anything Netscape is paying too much attention to official committees and too little attention to reality. (for example their irrelevant ID protocol for secure transfer.) and if Netscape descends from the mountain and proclaims a superset of HTML and additional HTTP behavior, then provided that they are open and retain backward compatibility, that is the way to go. If their proclamation is flawed, they will not get away with it. If their proclamation is OK, being developed from practice instead of bureaucratic politicing, then they will get away with it. For example consider the standards committee on SQL. It is just a political issue: What companies on the standards committee decide to do is deemed good, what others do is deemed bad. As a result the SQL "standard" is now just a random pile that does not make any sense. This is OK when the standards committee is dominated by those on the leading edge of technology, but irrelevant and harmful when they are lagging. A few years back, when the standards for new RAM chips were debated, those who were lagging decreed that any ram chip beyond their technology to make was deemed to be non standard. Needless to say, today we all use non standard RAM chips, which were belatedly defined to be standard. A similar thing occurred with the move to higher floppy disk densities. Those who could not double, decreed the next density increase would not be to double the previous density. Again, the floppy standard was non standard until the standards people reluctantly and belatedly accepted reality. In short, when the leading edge company dominates the standards committee, it is of little use, and when the old companies dominate the standards committee, it is actually harmful. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we James A. Donald are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. jamesd@netcom.com