Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful

Subject: Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful
From: Paul Prescod <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 10:54:53 -0500
Guy_Murphy@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> The problem with your solution is what needs to be "told" to the site
> impared is often not the same as what is presented on screen. Therefore
> unless you split visual presentation from aural presentation you cannot
> actualy *cater* for the visualy impared, you can only give them the
> unstrctured, often gibberish that is the aural interpretation of the Web
> site.... ie. a second best often useless fallback.... anybody want to argue
> that this is what the visualy impared deserve, or that infering aural
> presentation from the bulk of Web sites meets their needs?

You are attacking a straw man. I don't think that anybody is claiming that
there should be no aural presentation objects. 

Rather we are (or at least I am) claiming that the presentation objects
that most will people use should be designed specifically to degrade
gracefully on non-graphical media.

> Please people remember where we came from, and why we decided XML would be
> desirable in the first place. What more pointless exercise could we engage
> in that put all the time and effort into XML just to wind up back with
> HTML?

You are exaggerating severely here.

Even if all progress on formatting objects (visual and aural) halted right
now and we were stuck in the IE5 hell of generating HTML forever, the web
would be a significantly different place by virtue of the fact that we can
*deliver generic markup over the Web*. That was the goal of the
sgml-on-the-web project started a couple of years ago.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

"Microsoft spokesman Ian Hatton admits that the Linux system would have
performed better had it been tuned."
"Future press releases on the issue will clearly state that the research
was sponsored by Microsoft."
  http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/enterprise/1999/9904221410.asp


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