Vankat Permal
October 20th 03, 03:39 PM
The idea of the web is to digitalize your message for a variety of retrieval
methods -- for methods we have now, and for methods that we haven't thought
of yet. The W3C, the standards body that creates the code we use, is taking
a long view. That's their mandate. It's a reaction to the fact that the
world is going digital, and if we don't have an open, common, flexible
format to use, we'll lose our history every time technology moves on.
That's like language changing every five years. Forget Shakespeare. Forget
the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They would be as unreadable to you as
cuneiform. Just like much of NASA's 1976 Viking data. NASA can no longer
read the format those tapes are in. Researchers are having to review that
Mars data by digging through paper print-outs that older scientist hadn't
thrown away.
Hence the W3C's specs can seem a little broad. They have to be. The W3C is
engaged in a task that requires them to create code that remains open as
they extend its capabilities. This is very hard to do, but the result is a
cultural necessity for all of us. This is also why the specs can seem rather
involved for just getting some pages on the web. It's not because the W3C is
a bunch of artless geeks. They like art. When the need for extended graphic
layout capability was recognized in 1995, they shipped CSS1 in 1996. They're
paying attention, and they're very clever.
Right now the web is only 13 years old and they've produced specs for
dealing with screen, projection, print, handhelds, Braille, embossed
(printed Braille), aural, tty, tv, and machine reading. That's a lot. And
our technology is just warming up. So the web code is of necessity very
broad. It's not just about how things look on a PC or Mac.
You don't need to know all the specs to produce for the web, but you do have
to understand this underlying framework or you won't understand how to use
the code you do need.
--Cybil
methods -- for methods we have now, and for methods that we haven't thought
of yet. The W3C, the standards body that creates the code we use, is taking
a long view. That's their mandate. It's a reaction to the fact that the
world is going digital, and if we don't have an open, common, flexible
format to use, we'll lose our history every time technology moves on.
That's like language changing every five years. Forget Shakespeare. Forget
the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They would be as unreadable to you as
cuneiform. Just like much of NASA's 1976 Viking data. NASA can no longer
read the format those tapes are in. Researchers are having to review that
Mars data by digging through paper print-outs that older scientist hadn't
thrown away.
Hence the W3C's specs can seem a little broad. They have to be. The W3C is
engaged in a task that requires them to create code that remains open as
they extend its capabilities. This is very hard to do, but the result is a
cultural necessity for all of us. This is also why the specs can seem rather
involved for just getting some pages on the web. It's not because the W3C is
a bunch of artless geeks. They like art. When the need for extended graphic
layout capability was recognized in 1995, they shipped CSS1 in 1996. They're
paying attention, and they're very clever.
Right now the web is only 13 years old and they've produced specs for
dealing with screen, projection, print, handhelds, Braille, embossed
(printed Braille), aural, tty, tv, and machine reading. That's a lot. And
our technology is just warming up. So the web code is of necessity very
broad. It's not just about how things look on a PC or Mac.
You don't need to know all the specs to produce for the web, but you do have
to understand this underlying framework or you won't understand how to use
the code you do need.
--Cybil