semantics vs. styles was Re: [pmwiki-users] Re: floating box on the right

[Tom Holroyd]

Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> Yeah, I've heard that argument many times before from pro-standard
> people, and I just don't buy it.  People who make that argument must
> ignore the success of the Internet itself, in which consensus and
> implementations are achieved *before* standards are defined for them,
> and systems working without some pre-defined standard are still able
> to interact.

Perhaps you meant "Web".  Before HTML, the Internet was a jungle of 
non-interacting systems, and very hard to use.  When you say the 
standards were "defined" I think you mean "the pre-existing de facto 
standards were formalized."  And let us not forget that HTML was 
merely a subset of a pre-defined standard language called SGML.

I think most of the success of the Internet / Web can actually be 
attributed to _open_ standards, de facto, pre-defined, or whatever.
Protocols or syntax may range from baroque to procrustean, but if they 
are open, other software can be made to interact with them...

So I agree with you, that ad-hoc objects are not a barrier to 
communication at all.  As long as everybody knows what they mean.
Which is facilitated by using objects that everybody already knows.

-- 
Dr. Tom Holroyd
"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and
are the portals of discovery." -- James Joyce