Alternatives to the W3C

[Benedikt Koehler]

Well I guess, you don't have to go as far as the 3rd world. I'm designing
webpages for a quite large university in Germany, and lots of the pcs used
there are 486 or even 386 machines. Maybe the range of the "electronical 3rd
world" doesn't match the range of the "economical-or-call-it-as-you-like 3rd
world".
Anyway, I think this thread is very interesting and touches some central
points of XML, one of which may be the strict seperation of content and
display. And display is not only about aesthetic preferences, but also about
"localization" (show the information in a country-specific way),
"individualization" (show the information in a user-specific way),
"hardware-ization" (show the information in a hardware-appropriate way
without losing content) and perhaps many other "-izations".
This again leads back to the "one-browser-only"-debate as I think the above
mentioned is nearly impossible with one browser alone. You could do it all
on the server-side but then again you could only serve a few of the million
possible "-ization"-wishes.

Benedikt Koehler
www.furukama.de

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk [mailto:owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
> Brandt Dainow
> Sent: Donnerstag, 20. Januar 2000 16:20
> To: 'XML Dev'
> Subject: RE: Alternatives to the W3C
>
>
> I hate to be a bore about all this, but I think we should all
> remember that
> most of the human race do NOT have access to high-tech PC's.  There is a
> massive movement of 386 & 486 machines from the US and Europe into places
> like Africa.  Timbuktu, for example, has precisely 2 PC's, both
> 486's.  The
> doctors there use them to access medical information over the web
> which they
> couldn't afford to buy via medical journals.  They claim this has saved
> hundreds of lives in the last year alone.  Now maybe I'm an
> idealist, but I
> happen to think getting IT into the third world is a little more important
> than allowing some company to make an extra 2% profit.
>
> My message to developers is thus:- don't raise the tech barrier, lower it.
> Don't wish for better technology, work out how to do more with less.
>
> Brandt Dainow
> bd at internet-etc.com
> Internet Etc Ltd
> http://www.internet-etc.com


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