Article:		Binary Waltz, Play On
Subject:		Choosing Choices
Date:		2004-01-29 07:34:01
From:		Len Bullard
A little pedantry: "In communication technologies, choice is only good when you're the one making it." Communication is choosing. Always. The trick is that this isn't one dimensional. Earlier you say, that the W3C has to choose. Why? You choose the W3C to choose your choices. Organizations that liase with the W3C choose to work with the W3C to make choices. That is where this will get solved. Organizations such as the W3DC know that the technology for which they choose choices must have a binary. The W3C works with them on that or doesn't. The frictions are inevitable because the requirements vary. While I agree that a binary is coming in some form, it is because requirements are emerging from diverse sources. TimBL says we need some way to ensure we get lossless transformations among multiple formats. The W3DC and the various CAD groups know that they can't take the performance hits from using text-only formats and discuss a JPEG-like standard. MPEG patents obvious approaches to binarization of XML. What I don't agree with is that all parties will eventually sit down and create a single binary to rule them all. It seems unlikely until someone can prove without refutation that a single binary will do the job and that it will be unencumbered. Otherwise, it is possible that the performance requirements vary enough that no single approach delivers enough benefits that all will adopt it. In other words, not everyone will be satisfied with one authority choosing their choices. If so, and the political dimensions cannot be overcome by persuasive technical dimensions, then further discussion is waste. In any ecosystem, waste is abhorred by any niche forced to absorb the cost of handling it, and that niche will become non-cooperative. In short, no gain for the pain. Choice is only good for one making it if the choices offered have a local advantage. Cooperation is not sacrifice.

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• Choosing Choices
  2004-01-29 07:47:18 Robin Berjon [Reply]
  
  That was meant as a comment on the loss of format universality, not on who or what has to choose to choose which!

  
  Interoperability is much easier if you have only one format. If you have more, it's easier to operate if you're the one deciding which format is to be used. That's all there was to that part.