> At 10:12 AM 10/14/96, Eric Miller wrote:
>
> >These issues that are outlined here have been one of the underlying
> >foundations behind the Metadata Workshop Series. These workshops have...
>
> [snip]
>
> This work, by the way, is what the W3C workshop on distributed search and
> indexing intended (intends?) to leverage.
They can intend anything they want: They have to convince John Q.
Webauthor to actually *use* it correctly. And it isn't going to happen. I
feel like I did last year when I ranted at the HTML-WG about its
bullheaded refusal to adapt to real world forces that were steering HTML
is a different direction than they wanted: I told them that if they didn't
start 'dealing with it' about things like FONT, FRAMES, CENTER, etc.,
etc., they were going to get sandbagged by the market. They never learned
to deal with it (some of them are *still* trying to cram the HTML genie
back into its bottle...). They got sandbagged.
You *don't* convince the baby to let go of your face by rationally
explaining to them that it isn't nice to hold your cheek a grip of iron:
You offer them a rattle. If you try force instead, you are going to end up
with a screaming baby - who is *still* holding onto your face. The HTML-WG
(and the Dublin code) both are trying/tried force in their approaches to
standard setting. Rather than going with the flow and riding the part of
the flow headed in the direction they want to go they tried to build a dam
to divert the entire river - and found that a river is a damn hard (and
sometimes outright dangerous) thing to to try to stop.
-- Benjamin "will write metaphors for free" Franz