[uf-discuss] Scraping or parsing?

[Karl Dubost]

Le 5 mars 2007 à 11:31, Mike Schinkel a écrit :
>> png, jpeg, gif, illustrator files, pdf, videos format?
>
> I'll give you those, but there is something fundamentally different  
> about
> them, i.e. they are for visual presentation not logic and data  
> encoding. And
> there is SVG. Still, I have to ponder why tools have worked there  
> but not
> elsewhere.  It could be simply because their level of complexity in  
> text
> would be far beyond what a human could comprehend.

and *pdf* (given in the list)
I could have added, vcard, vcalendar, vectorial illustrator. All of  
those, I do NOT want edit by hands, even if I had the possibility ;)

> Ah, but I would argue they were *first* a format that did not  
> require tools
> for humans easily to understand, and later tools were added.  I don't
> complain about tools, on the contrary I like them. I just think the
> underlying format should not be forgiven its complexity because of  
> a faint
> hope that future tools that will make everything alright.

>> It depends on the context and the
>> way the technology has been developed, and its level of
>> maturity.
>
> But wouldn't you agree, people tend to use the promise of a tool as  
> a crutch
> when they should instead strive to make things in the raw grokable  
> by humans
> first?

That is a different issue :)  Human is too broad to be meaningful.

	The goal is really to make a technology
	which is easy to use depending on the
	ecosystem.

then using the argument that:
	1. complexity of the technology is NOT important because there are/ 
will be tools.
	2. simplicity of the technology is a MUST because of "hand authoring".
are both flawed, IMHO.

I'm really happy penballs exist even if I could use ink with a feather.
I'm really happy to have light measurement on my camera, even if I  
could use my own lightmeter (which I do on a 6x6)
I'm really I have not to teach HTML to my parents, and just give them  
a wysiwyg editor ;)


but yes I think we agree. :)

-- 
Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
W3C Conformance Manager, QA Activity Lead
   QA Weblog - http://www.w3.org/QA/
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