23 October 2008 Archives

Proving that the issues with extensibility will never go away until faced, and resolved:

Anne van Kesteren: Concerns that HTML5 does not have distributed extensibility. That is, namespaces. What people seem to want is to extend the browser with hundreds of markup languages. (How this keeps things simple to answer was not something I saw addressed.) You need something else than namespaces for that though, to start with. Also, what is wrong with using XML for this?
Sam Ruby: It seems that the distributed extensibility discussion won’t go away like apparently some would hope it would […] It occurs to me that Anne may be intentionally being thick here. what is wrong with using XML for this? Come on. I can answer that with two words: IE, and Postel. Next question?
Dave Orchard: While I agree with Sam’s assertion that misdirection is going on and IE8 is crucial, I think the real issue is that the anti-distributed extensibility crowd want control over all the languages that could be added into HTML. There’s no changing XML that would make them happy. I think the goal is that the HTML WG becomes the gatekeeper over any new languages that get added into the browser. We’ve seen it with aria-, SVG, MathML. Note that IE8 has a form of namespaces, and Chris Wilson was a supporter of distributed extensibility on the HTML WG list.

I’m not sure we need another form of namespaces. What we need is to address the concept of extensibility, without looking at the mechanics. Is extensibility good? Years ago, I would have been puzzled at even asking this question. Of course extensibility is good. Now I’m not sure that this opinion is shared by one and all. So, perhaps we should ask, Is extensibility bad? From the answers, we might find out where the problems exist, and maybe generate a dialog that results in solutions.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The majority of my photos posted recently are from the Missouri Botanical Gardens, or the St. Louis Zoo. I’ve not explored outside of the St. Louis area this last year primarily because of all the rain and flooding we’ve had. Though I was not, personally, directly impacted by the flooding, I’ve been indirectly impacted because of the extremely high mold content. I wasn’t aware until recently that I’m allergic to mold pollen, go figure. Add to this my allergic reaction to even the most innocuous Missouri bug bites, and I’ve spent most of the summer on paved paths and close to home.

A happy byproduct of my restricted explorations, though, is how much I’ve come to look beyond the obvious in my local walks at the St. Louis Zoo. So much so that I’m starting a new category of writings on the Zoo over at my personal web site, Just Shelley. There is much we can learn about ourselves, as well as the animals, at a zoo.

In the meantime, I have been posting photos from both the Botanical Gardens and the Zoo to the MissouriGreen image galleries. Posted below are some representative examples. Now that the weather is getting cooler, I may expand my explorations again, perhaps even include some fall color photos.

From the Gardens:

yellow flower