5 ms·

I do have respect for TBL's achievements, but honestly I don't see the purpose of the W3C, and also have never seen the justification for burning public money i

I do have respect for TBL's achievements, but honestly I don't see the purpose of the W3C, and also have never seen the justification for burning public money into W3C's pay-as-you-go org, before or after this change. Let's take a look at what W3C did lately, shall we? W3C HTML 5.2 was published in 2017, based on WHATWG material. W3C HTML 5.3 was "published" as merely a commit vs WHATWG's HTML repo with a promise to keep further sanctioned snapshots, which didn't happen though. How could a snapshot of WHATWG's phonebook-sized "living standard" thing be consistent and deserving of the "standard" badge anyway? CSS being such a crap specification, and absurdly outside its scope, the only reason of its existence seems to be an organizational stalemate, where Google let W3C have some token significance in web specs and give long-term CSS editors job security. At the cost of giving up any mental discipline, and even versioning, with the goal of encumbering the web to the point of no return. The state of web browsers is so abysmal, it could hardly be any worse. That situation should've been avoided by a competent real standardization body. But TBL is busy with completely irrelevant stuff such as XML and RDF. Sorry TBL, you might be a nice guy and tinkerer, but a manager you're not. Time to take standardization to ISO or another "real" standardization body.

jrochkind1 4y ago
I see the purpose of the W3C easily. I'd love to have a non-commercial cooperative entity determining web standards. I agree with you it hasn't been accomplishing it very well though.
derf_ 4y ago
> Time to take standardization to ISO or another "real" standardization body. If you want to see how the web could be worse, do this. The ISO process is openly hostile to the development of royalty-free standards. You can direct a lot of criticism towards the W3C, but they got the patent policy right.
- no_identd 4y ago
  ISO to me seems like an absolute nightterror of an organization. The Main-Moderator of https://old.reddit.com/r/iso9001 https://old.reddit.com/r/iso9001 runs a blog here: https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/latest-blog-posts/ https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/latest-blog-posts/ And almost every time I read anything from there, I just… Ugh. I don't even know where to start with describing the extent of just how much of a shitshow ISO represents. Edit, perhaps like this: After for many years intensely thinking about the organizational problems involved, I've come to a conclusion which seems rather very absurd to me: ISO could only deteriorate to this degree because of two things: 1. An absurd number of decades-long-standing bugs in Microsoft Word's Master Documents feature: http://www.addbalance.com/word/MasterDocHudson.htm http://www.addbalance.com/word/MasterDocHudson.htm. This tacitly yet tremendously increases the organisational costs of writing policy, process documentation, work instructions, &c. documents in a truly fully standardized manner (don't even get me started about ISO authoring tools, especially not about their internal ones. Microsoft Word Wizard .wiz files. I almost fell from my seat when I originally learned of that.); many of those working in pure IT organisations fail to realize this because there exist a lot of workarounds implementable when one has a large tech-affine workforce, but these workarounds don't work in large traditional enterprises. Some of those have invested in workarounds—most haven't, think they couldn't, and thus won't. 2. A feature parity gap in the file save dialog behaviors of Microsoft Excel (Filename suggestion doesN'T get pre-populated based on Document Title file metadata field) when compared to those of Microsoft Word (Filename suggestion DOES get pre-populated based on Document Title file metadata field). This makes semverdoc.org enforcement impossible in large organisations still stuck in e-mail–as–version–control–for–Microsoft–Excel–land, i.e. the majority of them, and There no replacement exists for Microsoft Excel in most large enterprises. Everything else seems like it just mostly comes down to sociopaths hiding behind cluelessly middle-managed misunderstandings. And the really sad thing: If said sociopaths really grok'd all of this, they'd probably do their damnest to undo this middle management incompetency compensation competence failure, because while it might seem like this ends up profiting /someone/, it actually does seem like it actually represents one of those rather very rare true loss–loss–loss scenarios. Come to think of it, see also: The subtle horror of IBM's Zachman Framework, as well as technical writing skills: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=31896609 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=31896609 Well… And then there's simply this comic: https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/06-04-2022-H.png https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/06...
rhdunn 4y ago
I personally find the "Living Standards" from WHATWG difficult to use. Specifically keeping track of what has changed with things like what new HTML elements have been added. With the versioned standards, I can work towards supporting that and I know that the standard is in a stable state with known backward compatibility guarantees. How is CSS not versioned? CSS may be complex and have a lot of baggage, but that is what happens with any language that grows and evolves over time. I don't see how that relates to giving CSS editors job security, especially given that they are doing a lot to provide modern and advanced capabilities in a way that is implementable and addresses users needs. XML and RDF may be irrelevant to you, but they are not irrelevant to everyone.
plonk 4y ago
> Time to take standardization to ISO or another "real" standardization body. Standard noobie here. Isn't ISO C++ a cautionary tale against that?

jrochkind1 4y ago

I see the purpose of the W3C easily. I'd love to have a non-commercial cooperative entity determining web standards. I agree with you it hasn't been accomplishing it very well though.

derf_ 4y ago

> Time to take standardization to ISO or another "real" standardization body. If you want to see how the web could be worse, do this. The ISO process is openly hostile to the development of royalty-free standards. You can direct a lot of criticism towards the W3C, but they got the patent policy right.

no_identd 4y ago
ISO to me seems like an absolute nightterror of an organization. The Main-Moderator of https://old.reddit.com/r/iso9001 https://old.reddit.com/r/iso9001 runs a blog here: https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/latest-blog-posts/ https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/latest-blog-posts/ And almost every time I read anything from there, I just… Ugh. I don't even know where to start with describing the extent of just how much of a shitshow ISO represents. Edit, perhaps like this: After for many years intensely thinking about the organizational problems involved, I've come to a conclusion which seems rather very absurd to me: ISO could only deteriorate to this degree because of two things: 1. An absurd number of decades-long-standing bugs in Microsoft Word's Master Documents feature: http://www.addbalance.com/word/MasterDocHudson.htm http://www.addbalance.com/word/MasterDocHudson.htm. This tacitly yet tremendously increases the organisational costs of writing policy, process documentation, work instructions, &c. documents in a truly fully standardized manner (don't even get me started about ISO authoring tools, especially not about their internal ones. Microsoft Word Wizard .wiz files. I almost fell from my seat when I originally learned of that.); many of those working in pure IT organisations fail to realize this because there exist a lot of workarounds implementable when one has a large tech-affine workforce, but these workarounds don't work in large traditional enterprises. Some of those have invested in workarounds—most haven't, think they couldn't, and thus won't. 2. A feature parity gap in the file save dialog behaviors of Microsoft Excel (Filename suggestion doesN'T get pre-populated based on Document Title file metadata field) when compared to those of Microsoft Word (Filename suggestion DOES get pre-populated based on Document Title file metadata field). This makes semverdoc.org enforcement impossible in large organisations still stuck in e-mail–as–version–control–for–Microsoft–Excel–land, i.e. the majority of them, and There no replacement exists for Microsoft Excel in most large enterprises. Everything else seems like it just mostly comes down to sociopaths hiding behind cluelessly middle-managed misunderstandings. And the really sad thing: If said sociopaths really grok'd all of this, they'd probably do their damnest to undo this middle management incompetency compensation competence failure, because while it might seem like this ends up profiting /someone/, it actually does seem like it actually represents one of those rather very rare true loss–loss–loss scenarios. Come to think of it, see also: The subtle horror of IBM's Zachman Framework, as well as technical writing skills: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=31896609 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=31896609 Well… And then there's simply this comic: https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/06-04-2022-H.png https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/06...

rhdunn 4y ago

I personally find the "Living Standards" from WHATWG difficult to use. Specifically keeping track of what has changed with things like what new HTML elements have been added. With the versioned standards, I can work towards supporting that and I know that the standard is in a stable state with known backward compatibility guarantees. How is CSS not versioned? CSS may be complex and have a lot of baggage, but that is what happens with any language that grows and evolves over time. I don't see how that relates to giving CSS editors job security, especially given that they are doing a lot to provide modern and advanced capabilities in a way that is implementable and addresses users needs. XML and RDF may be irrelevant to you, but they are not irrelevant to everyone.

plonk 4y ago

> Time to take standardization to ISO or another "real" standardization body. Standard noobie here. Isn't ISO C++ a cautionary tale against that?