Serge Knystautas wrote: > > Steve Brewin wrote: > > Standards are the things which allow complex interactions > to take place in > > this big wide world of ours. I'm sure you would be upset > most times if a > > standard was not adhered to - think world wide web, human > rights or your > > neighbour choosing to drive on the opposite side of the > road to the rest of > > you. Standards matter. > > But as your first two examples perfectly demonstrate (world > wide web and > human rights), you're luck if 80% of the people follow that standard. > > For aged standards like SMTP and NNTP, I've found you need to follow > pervaling practices as much as what's in the RFCs.
80% of people follow human rights standards. I wish! Anyway, to the point. Agreed, we also have defacto standards where current evolved behavior is yet to be enshrined as a new 'standard'. This may be driven by the community or be dictated by a monopoly. We have to handle this, sometimes by kicking back othertimes by accomodation. Circumstances dictate the correct approach. I was simply saying that supporting standards is not 'wrong' as seemed to being suggested in the original post. Nor is a considered accomodation of defacto standards. By 'considered' I mean keeping pace with prevalent usage while avoiding implementing work arounds for every buggy implementation of a standard out there. -- Steve --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
