<Glazblog/>

I'm also waiting for the repairman. My DSL link does not work because of France Telecom... Grrr

Spent some time answering to that rant against XBL posted into the www-style W3C's mailing list.

aDSL 512/128 line + ethernet DSL modem + fixed IP + wireless router. Surfing from home is cooler these days. Merry Xmas Daniel! Thanks Daniel!

AOL Germany cuts 170 jobs out of 550.... That's a rough 30%.

I have made a lot of progress on my builtin mouse-driven image resize for Composer. It now offers 8 handlers (one per side, one per corner) as any standard image editor does. Here is a screenshot if you want to glance at what it'll look like. I'll add it to mail composition too.

What a good reading to start this new day after yesterday evening's public transportation nightmare: a guy committed suicide at 6pm on the main subway line (RER A)... The line was totally stopped both directions several hours. People tried to use metro line 1 instead, and the line was overcrowded immediately. So overcrowded that the trains could hardly close their doors and that everything started being delayed. It probably left half a million people in chaos. Among those, Michel, my son, and I. It took 2 hours and 15 minutes to go back from Porte Maillot to where we live; it usually takes 30 minutes. Pfooooo.

What a great XPI add-on for your browser!!!! Install it, use it (press the wheel button of your mouse and keep it pressed while moving the mouse) and love it. Works in Mozilla, Netscape7 and Phoenix!

Saw yesterday night a recent interview of Robin Williams about his new show (?). Apparently, one of the best moments of the show is his imitation/caricature of George W. Bush. It's called "the man who speaks slowly because he can't read well" and it's very well done, very funny and his voice imitation is remarkable.

"Dear fellow Americans, I am proud to announce today the creation of the a new Organization that will, in a close future, guarantee next page that all citizens..."

Bwahahahahah

Big romantic eyes, slightly red skin, long legs... Hmmm so sexy.

Breathing again. I'm back. What an awful end of week it has been.

For the time being, and if you are a Web content provider, you have three choices:

1. HTML 4.01. The language was published almost 5 years ago and the W3C has consistently refused any addition to HTML since the 24th of april 1998. Only a few errata and clarifications were accepted into the 1999 XMas edition of HTML 4.01 (by the way, no, X in XMas does not mean eXtensible; you are infected by the XML-everywhere fever if you believe the contrary and you need to see a exorcist urgently).
2. XHTML 1.x in all its avatars. Basically, it's an XML reformulation of HTML 4 and you have the choice between the normal and the xml-gurus-hate-presentational-content version of it. Sorry to say, but unless you want to export to the web data stored in XML format using proprietary DTDs or Schemas, there is no real incentive right now for a move to XHTML. All the arguments you can read here and there explaining why you should switch to XHTML, why XHTML is sooooo better for you, all these arguments are just crap (When I think on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all).
   
3. XHTML 2.0. Forget it for at least three reasons:
1. Do you really think you will have XHTML 2.0 editors and browsers on your desk tomorrow ?
2. Have you seen the differences between HTML/XHTML1 and XHTML 2 ?
   
3. It's a nightmare; when I read XHTML 2.0, I can't help thinking that jwz, who is rarely the finest diplomat (and that's not negative from my pov, let's call a cat a cat), was right in his opinion about W3C.

Hey, pal, the ball's in your hands, make up your mind. Yeah, yeah, all these people shouting "NO, don't use a presentation attribute, that's bad" in your back. Or even "Can't you see the STYLE attribute is evil!!!". Annoying, isn't it ? You want the simplicity of an XMLized HTML 4, but you can't find in XHTML the features you need because you need to rely on some hypothetic styling engine ?

There is a fourth way. The fourth way should be called xHTML 5 because it should not be a super-strict-XMLization of HTML produced by a bunch of XML gurus on crack (no kidding, XML gurus must be on crack to make a monster like XML Schemas, but that's another "considered harmful" debate), but a real and fair followup to HTML 4. It's xHTML and not XHTML nor Xhtml because the important part is HTML, not the X.

Here is what I have specifically in mind.

1. xHTML 5 is an XML language. xHTML 5 has a DTD, no Schema. XML Schemas are a better proof of existence of the devil than XSL-FO.
2. only three presentation elements should be kept because of their super-wide usage. B, I and U. These three elements should be part of a sub-DTD available for integration thru system entity in all DTDs (if that's not clear, blame the time, it's 5am here and apparently I've just survived a layoff, though it's not fully sure yet).
3. all elements should have a normative default CSS style for visual media. For instance: em { font-style: italic; }
4. presentational attributes are allowed, and to give my real point of view encouraged, if and only if they have a normative CSS definition for visual media. For instance: p[align] { text-align: attr(align); } or td[bgcolor] { background-color: attr(bgcolor); }
5. let's put in xHTML 5 all the stuff the web authors need since 1998 and never got from the W3C: more META keywords, BGCOLOR on all elements, BGIMAGE on all elements, HEIGHT on TABLE, and so many other things. Drop me a mail if you have a suggestion. The contest is open.

Presentation hints are not bad. Closing the eyes in front of reality is bad, fanatism is bad. The Web just does not need strict separation between content and presentation. The Web needs Keep It Simple and Stupid. Because the customers of the Web are you, me, your child, your gran'ma, and the stupid sales guy next door. The stupid sale guy next door does not care about XML and strictness and he is right doing so. He wants a simple way of doing sexy documents, period. Other customers of the Web are Web authors. And Web authors want, need power and simplicity.

XHTML is simplicity without power. And I'm not sure about simplicity.

Get a decent browser (see this for my definition of decent browser) and try this demo of resizable images through side and corner handles

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Tantek, your blog is unreadable in Gecko based browsers. I have to apply #now { display: none; } with a bookmarklet to read it... See what it looks like if I don't.

No, I don't think that AOL Communicator and Minotaur are the same in spirit at all.

Before you flame me, read this:

• yes, someone else has probably done it before and done it better. So ?
• it's quick and dirty; I mean very quick and very dirty.
• it works in decent browsers only. If the support of DOM and CSS OM in your browser sucks to the point you can't render the simulation, you should seriously consider switching to Netscape or Mozilla.

After this little disclaimer, here is the thing.

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If you have more knowledge of world's geography than G.W. Bush, you have already heard of the Aral sea. The Aral sea is dying, thanks to the Soviets who used the water of all the rivers going to the Aral sea to irrigate the coton fields. Massive environmental destructions, as always.

But that's not the most frightening about the Aral sea ! In its center, there is an island called Resurrection Island. It keeps growing because the water level keeps decreasing. On the western coast of Aral, the soviets had built an R&D biological center and, of course, they studied biological weapons. After the end of Soviet Union, the scientists have stored the remaining germs on Resurrection Island, in sealed barrels immerged in chlorinated water. They stored there 100 tons of anthrax. This was officially reported by american experts who visited the site in the late 90's and by a french medical newspaper "Le Quotidien du Médecin"; the newspaper was quoted by book author René Cagnat in his book "La rumeur des steppes". Important detail, René Cagnat is a former french diplomat, a very reliable source; he is now retired but stayed in Central Asia. He went there. He saw, he knows.

As I said above, the island is expanding, it will soon be linked to the coast. And some cases of animal anthrax have been reported on the island, showing that the barrels are not hermetic enough. Oh, did I mention that the Aral sea is in one the most explosive areas of the world, just a few hundreds of kms away from Afghanistan for instance, where misery is so high that everything can be sold and bought ? Everything. Even germs.

Hey, the reports mention anthrax barrels. But what else ?...

By the way, if you're a french reader, don't use the word anthrax in French, because it does not have the same meaning. English anthrax is French charbon. French anthrax is totally different and is linked to furuncles.

From ZDnet |UK| :

By the end of the year, Sony will include version 6.0 of StarOffice on most consumer desktop PCs sold in Europe, marking another dent in Microsoft's dominance of office suites

By the end of the year, Sony will include version 6.0 of StarOffice on most consumer desktop PCs sold in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, according to Sun. Microsoft's Works package is currently used on most of those PCs.

Hum. Le gouvernement vient, sans renfort de pub, de doubler les moyens alloués à Vigiquigratte... euh... pardon... Vigipirate. C'est autant de plaisir de gardes permanentes sans grande indemnité pour la Maison Poulaga et les Pandores, mais cela m'inquiète un chouïa quand même. On ne mobilise pas les services de sécurité en entier juste pour le plaisir, ou pour faire bien. En particulier quand on joue le jeu du moins de publicité possible sur le sujet.

It's getting cold here (and I am sicker than yesterday) and this blog now wears its winter clothes

No wonder why France is far behind Northern America or even some parts of Asia for the deployment of broadband and digital services:

Related information: my second blog entry, months ago.

One more contributor to CaScadeS. Michelle proposed to help today. Welcome Michelle !

Boarf INRIA drops W3C. Officially, that's for an expansion, of course. Officiously, I wonder if INRIA is not recentering on its core activities, dropping what they have always called "The W3C Project". W3C has always been an alien among normal INRIA activities, and W3C staff have always been aliens among normal INRIA people.

And of course, I guess that there is a budget problem too.

Can you believe the communiqué does not mention that INRIA will remain a W3C bureau in France ? OOOPS, by the way, does it remain a W3C bureau in France ?