Comments on: HTML is domain specific http://barelyenough.org/blog/2012/09/html-is-domain-specific/ What could possibility go wrong? Wed, 10 Apr 2013 04:08:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Peter Williams http://barelyenough.org/blog/2012/09/html-is-domain-specific/comment-page-1/#comment-86890 Peter Williams Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:35:15 +0000 http://barelyenough.org/?p=740#comment-86890 Mike Kelly wrote:
> the breadth of applications that can be (sensibly) implemented
> with a media type is a very good indication of its genericity.

I agree. HTML allows basically any application whose primary function is to display documents for human consumption. A hypothetical banking media type would allow basically any application whose primary function is about the flow of money between people and organizations. The sets of applications certainly overlap, but i am not at all sure which is larger. Of the applications implemented today the display stuff to humans set is probably larger, but as we get better and better at automation will humans remain intergal to so many applications? I sure hope not.

]]> By: Mike Kelly http://barelyenough.org/blog/2012/09/html-is-domain-specific/comment-page-1/#comment-86889 Mike Kelly Thu, 27 Sep 2012 11:36:07 +0000 http://barelyenough.org/?p=740#comment-86889 the breadth of applications that can be (sensibly) implemented with a media type is a very good indication of its genericity.

All of the semantics in HTML are generic. Hence why an HTML document is empty until some specific domain is expressed with it. It establishes a generic interface with which we can drive interactions across many different problem domains.

that’s what most people mean when they say HTML is generic.

]]> By: Peter Williams http://barelyenough.org/blog/2012/09/html-is-domain-specific/comment-page-1/#comment-86887 Peter Williams Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:25:08 +0000 http://barelyenough.org/?p=740#comment-86887 By this logic you could call some hypothetical banking media type generic because it could to used to implement a terrorist tracking application, or part of an ecommerce app, or a macro economics modeling app, etc. The measure of the genericity of a media type is not what applications can be implemented with it, but the semantics it provides.

Better terminology might help, but I suspect our disagreement is not just one of terminology.

]]> By: Mike Kelly http://barelyenough.org/blog/2012/09/html-is-domain-specific/comment-page-1/#comment-86886 Mike Kelly Wed, 26 Sep 2012 15:16:44 +0000 http://barelyenough.org/?p=740#comment-86886 When people use the term “domain specific” when talking about media types, they mean application domains such as ‘banking’, ‘email’, ‘project management’, etc.

HTML is not specific to any of these domains and yet you can use it to build applications in them.

Yes you can call “representing renderable media and links graphically within a window” a domain, and therefore claim that HTML is specific in that sense but I don’t think you actually gain anything by doing that. I definitely would not agree that “HTML is domain specific in the extreme”.

Perhaps we just need better terminology or better clarification of what we are already using? iirc mamund’s book actually covers this?

]]>