[WMS] Re: Next steps
- From: Mario Salzer <mario@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wiki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 23:48:24 +0200
Florian Festi asked:
> * How to vote during the process/in the end? Vote at all?
Yes, everybody SHOULD go voting.
I think it'll go as follows:
- someone starts a thread "vote: best markup for 'tables'"
- everybody looks at the comparison summary
- either we have a clear winner beforehand,
or we discuss which is the "best" on our favourite points:
- which one is most user-friendly
- which is best supported
- least conflicts
...
- a heated discussion goes on
- but "rough consensus" is enough to get a winner
Don't forget, a final voting is unavoidable nevertheless. And we can
take on discussions later, or rediscuss things as soon as someone
again raises valid points on a subject.
> * What level of detail should the standard have?
Mixed. My opinon is, that it should be a relaxed "standard". That is,
it should make as few requirements as possible. Many RFCs failed with
what I'd like to call "RFC2119-abuse" (- everybody knows the MUSTs and
SHOULDs and MUST-NOT wording of the many internet drafts).
A lot of standards have fallen prey to this. WebDAV makes a good
example - just because of one "MUST" too much, it is not very useful
for Wikis, because it requires authentication up front; and many clients
now demand that as well; while the real intend of the authors simply was
to have strong authentication favourably (and not as requirement).
But back on topic: Our standard clearly targets user-friendliness, but
it's of course intended as help for implementors of future WikiEngines.
That is, it can be wordy where it makes sense, it could give lots of
recommendations and hints. For example we could provide a sample regex
for detecting WikiWords (for ASCII and/or L-1).
The part that says "Use ** for making text bold." is eventually the
shortest of what comes out of this WG.
> * What Set of Tags to standardize (leveled approach?)?
I don't think we need to modularize it at all. Just let it say something
like "You are free to implent this and that, but neither is a dependency."
Again, the best standards IMO are those, that give people enough freedom
to do the right thing. (A little guideance is great.)
mario
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