On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 10:26:59PM -0600, Grant Taylor wrote: > I'm sure there are those that will disagree with me. But I don't think it's > as important how professional things look as long as they are sound ideas. > Lest it be an ad hominem attack. Which, as previously indicated is not a > good thing. > > Good ideas should be able to stand on their own. If Caveman's idea turns > out to be deemed better on it's technical merits, then the text vs HTML vs > TeX/LaTeX formatting shouldn't matter.
Well said; thanks for the correction. Mathematical notation can be seen as a
tightly coupled analogue to this sort of typesetting: the same book that
introduced Algebraic expressions (Cossike numbers) and the equals sign ('=')
into the English-speaking world also suggested the use of the word
"zenzizenizenike" to represent `x^8` [1]. Solid ideas will stick due to, as you
said, their own merits; the form of the representation is generally redundant.
Nevertheless, as xkcd so brilliantly explains, TeX inspires a level of blind
trust in the content of a document [2]. As long as you avoid proposing standards
in the form of an animated GIF, you're probably going to be OK. ;-)
> I would probably argue that using a mid to higher level language or even a
> pseudo code for documentation / explanation might be advisable. I think
> that it's more important to get the idea out, in a way that it's easily
> understandable and re-implementable by others.
I concur, but this was about the reference implementation.
> Is it better to have the first implementation be crem de la crem and the
> overall idea not be adopted? Or would it be better for the original
> implementation to fade into history while the concept takes over and
> surpasses current email solutions?
It would be impossible to make the initial implementation the crème de la crème
of all implementations, unless the protocol was never intended to expand. We do
see some reference implementations being used as the de facto choice for
supporting many standards, such as Apache Tomcat as the ref. imp. for Java
Servlets, but as the name would suggest, reference implementations are only
intended to be used as a reference to developers of future implementations.
> I think trying to restrict things will do more harm to the idea than the
> idea itself would do good. It's likely to cause people to reject it out of
> hand as why would they want to choose something that fights them?
Moreover, these ridiculous restrictions only encourage various implementations
to deviate from the standard, adding their own non-standard extensions like
"HillaryMail HTML support". Implementation developers are always going to add
stupid things to their software (just look at the GNU `typeof` introspection
mess), but the standard text itself should certainly not encourage such
behaviour.
Ashley.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenzizenzizenzic
(My favourite thing about this mad notation is the words used to describe it in
the original manuscript: "represent the square of squares squaredly".)
[2] https://xkcd.com/1301/
--
Ashley Dixon
suugaku.co.uk
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