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Why Browsers Haven't Standardized
Page 3 —
It Can't Be That Bad, Can It?
To see how messy things can get, let's invent a scenario. Say the W3C
is working on a new standard for describing arcs and circles. This effort
has its own Working Group, with representatives from various corporations
and research firms, and everyone has issued press statements about how
happy and excited they are to be working on this wonderful new standard.
As the specification is written, the group decides that one of the
properties of this language is degrees, which describes the
number of degrees through which the arc traverses. If you wanted half of
a circle you'd write
degrees: 180;
which is very CSS-like. But 180 degrees starting where? Let's say the
standard states that all arcs begin at the top of the circle and move
clockwise, like a compass. It's an arbitrary starting point, of course, but
the Working Group had to pick something, and everyone was familiar with
compasses (maybe they were all Boy Scouts or something). So the above
declaration would result in a browser drawing the right half of a circle.
So far so good, but what happens to this game when someone changes the
rules?
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