Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Boxes & Arrows: Foreseeing the future: The legacy of Vannevar Bush. It is because of this article that Bush has been hailed as the conceptual creator of "hypertext". The article is at its most innovative and interesting in the description of how the memex device was to work for the reader. [Tomalak's Realm] 6:04:21 PM     And the first thing that's added is background images FOP 0.20.4 release candidate available (XML Apache Project) [IBM DeveloperWorks: XML News] 5:52:12 PM     XML & Academia, SVG & Flash An interesting DaveNet today talking about XML and academia and how the propellerheads at the top of the XML process are disconnected from the real world. I agree with Dave but I don't think it's just academia that suffers from this behavior. There have been plenty of times I've been working on a project when I realise I've been so interested in developing the theoretical aspects that I've taken my eye off the actual users - you just have to make sure you do something about it (and quickly). The first XML spec really solved most of the problem, now they're just arguing over esoteric issues which have little relevance in the real world. There's a relevant concept in the Extreme Programming movement of doing enough programming to solve the current problem and no more. The idea behind it is that 80% of the time you never going to need to extend the code. The amount of time you save can be applied more efficiently to re-designing the 20% that does need changing. The use of vector graphics on the web is a great example. Everyone knew we needed a format and two appeared. SVG went through the usual standards process with everybody adding features while SWF just included the amount necessary to be useful. It was 'enough' to be getting on with and so took off like a rocket. Solving 80% of the problem is usually enough. [Flash Blog] 8:46:20 AM

© Copyright 2003 Peter Loats. Last update: 2/28/03; 7:35:15 PM.