Hi, Folks- It seems strange to have to explicitly say this about webapp technologies, but use cases obviously don't cover all the use cases.
Web applications --the reason we're doing these specs at all-- were not within the scope of the introduction of HTML, CSS, Javascript, or any of the technologies that are now the foundations of webapps. People took those insufficient scraps and built amazing things with them, far beyond the intended use cases. This should be the sign of a well-designed technology: that it can be adapted to do something the original creator never envisioned. Yes, it is good to be methodical about covering all the bases. It is less good to limit the potential other uses. Lachlan Hunt wrote (on 1/28/09 6:40 PM): > > Giovanni Campagna wrote: >> >> This is was not a complete use case, it was just an example. > > Well, it's use cases that are needed, not just simple examples that are > trivial to make up. Sorry, what precisely do you think use cases are? They are examples of what people will want to do with the technology. Stop artificially raising the bar for what you find acceptable rationales for inclusion. You don't like namespaces: we get that. But they exist, and we have to address them. You claim that there were too many technical challenges to including namespaces in this version; the SVG WG accepted that, and empathize with the notion of shipping an imperfect or incomplete spec, rather than the ideal spec, because of time constraints, implementation and shipping deadlines, and market pressures. That's reality. But please stop pretending that there are no use cases for namespace support, or that the use cases that are raised are insufficient, to be addressed by the Selectors API. That's not reality. People want to mix markup in documents, even markup we've never heard of or don't approve of. How we address that need is a technical issue, not an ideological or rhetorical one. Defining use cases is done to ensure that the known cases are covered by the technology, not to exclude options. Meeting use cases and requirements is necessary, but not sufficient. Regards- -Doug Schepers W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs
