[uf-discuss] Avoiding Premature Optimisation in ‘The Process’

[Ben Ward]

As some of my recent messages will clearly suggest, I'm concerned  
that we are becoming too quick during development of new formats to  
leap on some of the optimisation patterns established for other  
formats (abbr-pattern, include-pattern).

We're starting to see situations — such as co-ordinates being the  
expansion of a place name — where we seem to be thinking of the  
pattern before we're thinking about the meaning of the raw HTML it  
produces.

I'd like to see the Process include something that perhaps  
discourages or even disallows the use of optimisation patterns  
(Include, ABBR, any others in the future) until after the first sets  
of mark-up are produced and semantically optimised. Then, where  
patterns do match the optimal mark-up and HTML semantics, they can be  
added. Where they do not, then we identify situations that require  
new patterns.

My hope would be that by including such a step, we avoid shoehorning  
things into the ABBR pattern that are inappropriate, and force the  
entire development community to think about HTML first.

Ben