Stijn Peeters wrote:
As I said, a SHOULD requirement in the specification which will (given the
current status quo) not be followed by the major(ity of) browser vendors is
useless and should be improved so it is a recommendation which at least can
be implemented. Changing the SHOULD to MUST means that a lot of browser
vendors would not be able to develop a conforming implementation.
Governments do generally not build browsers or HTML parsers so an HTML
specification would likely not influence them much, and I believe they are
not who such a specification is aimed at.
This is a tired argument already debunked. The browsers that won't
support OGG support plugins (and still remain HTML5 compliant). The
recommendation will push other browsers (of which there are many)
towards a common ground.
As stated before, it did not advocate them, merely stated them as *examples*
of image formats. Your claim that HTML4 played a substantial role in
adoption of GIF and JPEG is interesting. Do you have any sources for that?
Yes.
(http://www.houseofmabel.com/programs/html3/docs/img.html). I quote:
--------
As "progress" increases the number of graphics types I've been asked to
support in /HTML3/, many people are unsure as to exactly what formats
are supported so perhaps a list is in order:
* GIF (&695, "GIF")
* PNG (&B60, "PNG")
* JPEG (&C85, "JPEG")
* Sprite (&FF9, "Sprite")
* BMP (&69C, "BMP")
* SWF (&188, "Flash")
* WBMP (&F8F, "WBMP")
-----------
So which of the above became defacto web standards under HTML4? And
there were a LOT more image formats out there. Not proof, but certainly
evidence the spec helped narrow down the list. Even though it was
neither a SHOULD or MUST specification they were mentioned and it seems
to me that counts for something. So did the fact the formats in question
were believed to be public-domain. However, I acknowledge the
speculative nature of this as I acknowledge the speculative nature of
your other claims (like browser manufactures not supporting OGG when the
spec becomes final).
Shannon
