2004-06-02 06:48 UTC Spring 2004 Travelog: Part 8 (First Day of the Workshop)
Today I listened to a good dozen presentations from various groups on the subject of Web Applications and Compound Documents.
Some interesting things came out. First, the only sustained spontaneous clapping of the entire day came as someone suggested, in response to my brief statement of how backwards compatibility is critical, that it was about time to drop HTML and Windows IE6 from the roadmap.
So I can assume from that that most people don't agree with the whole backwards-compatibility thing!
Second: I was quite amused to see that, of all companies, Microsoft, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems actually agreed on something. Namely that trying to standardise an API for sophisticated applications is simply a non-starter. The argument, which I agree with, is that such APIs are simply insanely complicated, and that making interoperable implementations is nigh on impossible. Just look at the trouble WINE has had trying to implement Win32 again — now imagine if you had to write a spec to actually describe the entire Win32 API in terms that could actually be implemented interoperably without reverse engineering the first implementation as the WINE people do.
What was funny was watching the other people then disagree with them. Hint: If three of the most bitter rivals in the marketplace — all of whom have extensive experience in the subject in question — agree on something, then it is probably true.
What we (Opera and Mozilla) want to do is simply extend HTML, DOM, and CSS a bit so that the most common things are easier to do. Things like my Web Forms 2 proposal or my server sent events proposal. These are simple extensions, not an attempt to provide comprehensive platform APIs.
Another point that came out of the discussions is that, in case there was any doubt, Internet Explorer in Longhorn will not support XHTML or SVG. (Microsoft suggested they would need some significantly more comprehensive test suites before they started working on standards compliance again.)
After the meeting, a bunch of us had dinner at La Fiesta. Our table had three Microsoft employees, two Red Hat employees, two Mozilla Foundation employees, and an Opera Software employee. I bet you won't see that very often.
Tomorrow we have another dozen presentations. I expect to see more of the same; mostly people expounding on the virtues of XForms, SVG, XHTML2, or their own radically new proprietary technologies, and explaining how Web Applications would all be much better off if the W3C would go down their chosen route.
We, of course, want the W3C to go down our chosen route. Since there doesn't seem to be much consensus on doing that, though, the question is what should we do now? Should we do our own thing (in public of course) and then submit it to the W3C (or IETF or ECMA) at some future point once we have initial implementations? Should we simply do our own thing (Opera, Mozilla, and a few interested parties) and forget standardisation altogether? Should we just take part in whatever Web Applications working group the W3C sets up and implement whatever comes out of that in several years' time, despite being fully aware that few people will ever use it? (Which is a foregone conclusion since it wouldn't work in Windows IE6.)
I'm learning towards the first of the three at the moment. I guess the Opera and Mozilla people will have to discuss this in more detail before we decide anything though.