WEB4LIB digest 813

[JQ Johnson]

--On Sat, Oct 4, 1997 2:37 PM -0700 "Thomas Dowling" <tdowling at ohiolink.edu>
wrote: 

> Your remark about looking at every browser known to humanity is something of
> a canard.  Platform independence is not a haphazard result of using as many
> platforms as possible; it's built into the process of writing to standards
> and understanding the medium.

Although this is a plausible position, it misunderstands the reality of the
world.  The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose
from.  In this case, in addition to those standards (SGML) promulgated by
formal international standards organizations, there are the "standards"
promulgated by a widely supported (but not officially recognized) nonprofit
organization -- W3C -- and the de facto standards defined by the popular
browsers.  Ignoring the imprtance of the last is ignoring economic and
practical reality. 

JQ Johnson                      office: 115F Knight Library
Academic Education Coordinator  email: jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu
1299 University of Oregon       voice: 1-541-346-1746  fax: -3485
Eugene, OR  97403-1299          <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj>