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And if we were all using XHTML1.1 now instead, yes, your parser would be easier, except all the richer content would be in flash, and all the web apps would be

by Latty 9y ago

And if we were all using XHTML1.1 now instead, yes, your parser would be easier, except all the richer content would be in flash, and all the web apps would be desktop applications, and you wouldn't be able to parse that at all, even with a full browser. You are acting like everyone would just stop and wait for you to make your dream implementation that's ideal - that's not how the world works. WHATWG was an admission that we can't stop it, so we might as well embrace it. Embracing it has resulted in browsers being far more consistent, and new features being a shared part of the web platform, and not siloed off in plugins and other platforms. That's why W3C is irrelevant now.

kuschku 9y ago
You’re assuming XHTML1.1 would never have evolved further, never have gotten more content. And Flash, despite its flaws, would have been a much better starting point for rich content than the ecosystem we have today. Many of the features Flash provided are only available in browsers today through babel.js transpilation. As result, we’re stuck with a language without stdlib and broken syntax. We’re stuck with a document model that’s impossible to work with or parse, and with impossible layout management. If you want web applications, it’d make much more sense to port the Android layout XML format to the web than to attempt to use HTML5 for it, because HTML5 is insanity for building applications. > and all the web apps would be desktop applications I don’t see that as anything bad. The web is for documents, and lightly interactive content. All the rich applications on the web are opaque to any crawler I could write anyway, as I just get "You need JS to view this React app". Desktop applications would be just as parseable, except they would also be less of a resource hog.
- tptacek 9y ago
  The idea that standards groups exist to push for top-down reconcepting of how the world should work is a common one, and is also a good reason why standards groups fail. Your idea of what the best outcome is won't be the same as every other stakeholders, and no one stakeholder will have exactly the same idea of the best outcome as the market will. Ultimately, the market will win, no matter what your standards group says. The point of standards is interoperability, not rationalization. When standards groups try to rationalize technologies real people work with, they cease to provide value, and instead become obstacles that real engineers end up laboriously working around.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    When I was a child in elementary school, a standards committee decided to change my native language. They replaced the spelling of most words, and many grammatical rules. We were forced to obey these changes, any use of the old rules was counted as mistake in school. Back then, many older books were still using the old rules. By the time I left high school, almost no books with the old rules were left. All had been reprinted. All newspapers had switched. Autocorrect programs had been updated with the new rules as well. In a matter of 8 years, an entire language had changed its orthography and parts of its grammar, top-down, and it worked out fine. I’m sorry, if an entire human language with 120 million speakers can be updated top-down like that, a web spec can as well.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      That sounds horrible.
      - kuschku 9y ago
        It was amazing. The new orthography is much simpler, and has far fewer insane rules or exceptions. And most people that have seen the transition, but were born after it, or went to school during it, agree. I know it can work on this scale, I’ve seen it IRL. Many languages do stuff like this, German has the council of German language, and French has their Academy. You can do the same on the web. You just need to have all vendors working together to actually do it.
        tptacek 9y ago
        The idea that a bunch of standards group officials can decide for the world that web pages are simply lightweight content publishing mechanisms and that real applications should be build exclusively in Flash and that that worldview can be ratified and mandated by browser vendors does not seem amazing to me. At any rate: the Internet is a market system, not a top-down autocracy.
        9y ago

by Latty 9y ago

kuschku 9y ago

You’re assuming XHTML1.1 would never have evolved further, never have gotten more content. And Flash, despite its flaws, would have been a much better starting point for rich content than the ecosystem we have today. Many of the features Flash provided are only available in browsers today through babel.js transpilation. As result, we’re stuck with a language without stdlib and broken syntax. We’re stuck with a document model that’s impossible to work with or parse, and with impossible layout management. If you want web applications, it’d make much more sense to port the Android layout XML format to the web than to attempt to use HTML5 for it, because HTML5 is insanity for building applications. > and all the web apps would be desktop applications I don’t see that as anything bad. The web is for documents, and lightly interactive content. All the rich applications on the web are opaque to any crawler I could write anyway, as I just get "You need JS to view this React app". Desktop applications would be just as parseable, except they would also be less of a resource hog.

tptacek 9y ago
The idea that standards groups exist to push for top-down reconcepting of how the world should work is a common one, and is also a good reason why standards groups fail. Your idea of what the best outcome is won't be the same as every other stakeholders, and no one stakeholder will have exactly the same idea of the best outcome as the market will. Ultimately, the market will win, no matter what your standards group says. The point of standards is interoperability, not rationalization. When standards groups try to rationalize technologies real people work with, they cease to provide value, and instead become obstacles that real engineers end up laboriously working around.
- kuschku 9y ago
  When I was a child in elementary school, a standards committee decided to change my native language. They replaced the spelling of most words, and many grammatical rules. We were forced to obey these changes, any use of the old rules was counted as mistake in school. Back then, many older books were still using the old rules. By the time I left high school, almost no books with the old rules were left. All had been reprinted. All newspapers had switched. Autocorrect programs had been updated with the new rules as well. In a matter of 8 years, an entire language had changed its orthography and parts of its grammar, top-down, and it worked out fine. I’m sorry, if an entire human language with 120 million speakers can be updated top-down like that, a web spec can as well.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    That sounds horrible.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      It was amazing. The new orthography is much simpler, and has far fewer insane rules or exceptions. And most people that have seen the transition, but were born after it, or went to school during it, agree. I know it can work on this scale, I’ve seen it IRL. Many languages do stuff like this, German has the council of German language, and French has their Academy. You can do the same on the web. You just need to have all vendors working together to actually do it.
      - tptacek 9y ago
        The idea that a bunch of standards group officials can decide for the world that web pages are simply lightweight content publishing mechanisms and that real applications should be build exclusively in Flash and that that worldview can be ratified and mandated by browser vendors does not seem amazing to me. At any rate: the Internet is a market system, not a top-down autocracy.
        9y ago