Re: www-standards?

Chris Lilley, Computer Graphics Unit (lilley@v5.cgu.mcc.ac.uk)
Thu, 16 Jun 1994 20:52:42 GMT


In article <9406161903.AA16506@server.bonnell.com>, William King said:

>you folks appear to be getting
>very close to attracting some attention from the standards community.
>My personal view is that the involvement of standards organizations in this
>activity might bring some value but that value might have a price.

Oh great. That worries me more than Microsoft. ISO picks it up and before we
know it there is a DIS of HTML 2.0 expected in 2012! Aaargh. I mean, look at the
timescale for a C binding to GKS.

Plus there may be one or two changes happen when ISO take it on board. Look at
what happened to the ISO standardisation of Modula-2. Then again, maybe they
will standardise HTML 1.0 and prohibit any changes. Look at ISO Pascal. Or maybe
they already have a hypermedia system or two .. look at Hyper-ODA, MHEG, PREMO,
... oh no, I feel most ill.

Unless they can take it and be the _sole_ controlling body, they aren't
interested, too. Look at what happened to the ISO standardisation of X.

>There is certainly a trade-off here and I, for one, am not sure at what point
>in the formative cycle of a world-altering technology such as the web that the
>value of standards activity can be maximized and the cost minimized.
>I suspect that now is not the right time.

I concur.

--
Chris