Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 10:35:33 -0400
From: Sean Doyle <sean@amicas.com>
Reply-To: sean@amicas.com
X-Accept-Language: en
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: "chris K." <ckelty@MIT.EDU>
Subject: Standards..

Chris..

This is part of a long (and growing) thread about BizTalk (some new Microsoft-XML thang).
There is a very lame web site that Microsoft created for it that can only be accessed using
IE5; this launched lots of stuff about what standards are (since the problems with the site
may or may not be related to incomplete support of standards on Netscape's part - lots of
religious/hermeneutic debate here. Some of this has to do with converting " " to %20 (the
'standard' way to convert spaces in URLs) automatically; there are apparently some ambiguities
here when using non-Latin alphabets).

This is from the "'XML Dev'" <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk> list.

Sean

Didier PH Martin wrote:

> Hi Lisa,
>
> You said:
>
> > It won't be ignored.  It will have to be dealt with, just like any other
> > pseudo-standard widely implemented Microsoft creation.
>
> > Oh I'm sorry, did I say pseudo-standard?  I meant just like any other
> > proprietary format.
>
> reply:
> More and more I am getting confused by the word "standard":
> a) Sun claim that Java is a standard but still keep control on it. However,
> they try to find an organism to put a stamp of approval or a "standard"
> stamp on this even if it remains that most of Java is a Sun production and
> that the API is mostly a SUN byproduct. Even with that state of fact, a lot
> of people embrace the Java as a standard song.
> b) European ECMA organism at some time declared that some part of Win32 is a
> standard. There is even a group of people that implement the Win32 API on
> other platforms(this is not mainsoft or Bristol). They are not suited by
> Microsoft . But Win32 is said proprietary
> c)W3C is a consortium of several companies and produces "standards." However
> the W3C composition is mostly American. Could we say that W3C produces
> international standards?
> d) ISO is an international organism with representative from different
> countries. But ISO weight seems to be less and less significant.
> e) Sometime a group of manufacturer comes with a new common API and declare
> this as a standard.
> f) some Linux group claim that their version is the "standard" Linux
> version.
> g) IETF is also producing standards. Is IETF more or less democratic than
> W3C? Is IETF representive?
> h) Is what a group of people choose a standard? Is a market share a
> standard. English is the "de facto" official US language. Can I clainm that
> we got 1000 signature to state that laplander is a US language "standard".
> Will this group be taken seriously? are we doing the same thing in our
> field?
>
> I do not say that one is better than the other. Just ask: what do the word
> "standard" means now. What is behind this word?
>
> It seems that the word "standard" is a new modern marketing magic wand. what
> do this means exactly? If W3C has 320 members and claim to produce
> "standards." Does this means that if I get 320 friends (not from the same
> company) and produce a spec, could this be a "standard"? if not why? Did we
> forget some historical lessons when at some period of time people where
> claiming authority based on some "standards", even attributed themselves the
> right to burn people not conforming to the "standards." So, what this word
> really mean today? disguised power struggle? Do "standard" really mean
> "against Microsoft" (this does not necessarily I am for _ and that I have to
> say this just put more emphasis on the quest to find the real meaning of
> "standards") ? Do "standard" mean... What this word really means anyway?
> What is really behind it?
>
> PS: about the URL stuff and the Biztalk site. The specs says that a URLs
> having spaces are to be transformed so that the spaces are replaced with %20
> or encoded before "name resolution." Some browsers do this when the URL is
> typed in the address box but not when the URL is contained in a text. Is
> this a bad implementation? maybe. However we can say that this omission
> could leads to problems as you experimented on this site. Where is the
> breakdown? in the browser that do not do the transform or the author that do
> not manually do the transform (from " " to "%20")? And, what is objectivity
> then? What about the reflex of some members of this list to claim guilty
> without doing some homework?   Why not instead report the problem to
> Mozilla.org so that we can correct the problem.
>
> regards
> Didier PH Martin
> mailto:martind@netfolder.com
> http://www.netfolder.com
>
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Last Modified 11-Sep-99 9:14 PM ckelty@mit.edu

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