Tom Morris

David Andersson has an article at Digital Web about XHTML2 and HTML5. I'm firmly in the XHTML2 camp - the features are more what I want, regardless of browser support. If a whole load of developers stood up and said "we support XHTML", the browsers might fall in line and pay attention. For too long, the Web has been all about browsers, and people forget that people do things with Web data.

For too long, the discussion of Web standards has been far too conservative and has lacked any vision.

What we need to have is a dual model approach - instead of having an HTML WG and an XHTML WG, the W3C ought to combine the two and have a branch to work on fixing up what we're doing already and a 'future' WG.

The 'current' WG would fix up HTML 4/XHTML 1 to clean up problems with them, and work with well-established technology like CSS - and basically try and harangue the browser makers in to supporting (X)HTML and CSS properly. The 'future' WG would work on extending that work towards new XML based constructs - SVG, RDF etc.

That way, the 'current' WG could operate on what's practical (ie. what web designers are bitching about) and the 'future' WG could work on stuff that's just plain cool (ie. what web designers would like to dream about if they weren't bitching about other stuff).

As the stuff that the 'future' WG does gets more and more practical, it could be neatly transitioned in to the 'current' WG. This model works quite neatly with software development - stable and unstable branches. Of course, both the HTML future WG and the current WG would have to be open processes with public oversight.

The 'current' group should focus on browser support, accessibility, usability, inter-operability and well-specified standards - on paving the cowpaths, on keeping it simple, on building consensus. The 'future' WG could then focus on building the web of data, rethinking old assumptions, doing things differently and writing standards to fit the niche cases. The 'future' group wouldn't be paving cowpaths, it'd be dreaming of Platonic highways, coming up with grand designs that maybe aren't practical.

The synthesis of current and future would get us where we need to go - having three competing standards bodies (HTML WG, XHTML WG and WhatWG) pushing different standards based on different paradigms (SGML/HTML 4 and XML) probably isn't. Just an idea.

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Wesley Elsberry has pointed to a report that a certain scary-looking, white-haired German transvestite called Joseph Ratzinger believes in evolution. Well, he also believes it was started by an unseen magical force otuside the universe, which later sent a second instance of himself to Earth as a half-God-half-man to be tortured to cover for the sins of mankind whiche he knew would happen all along.

So congratulations, Mr. Ratzinger, for taking one step down the path of rationality, but there is still some way to go. What is also quite amusing about Ratzinger's remarks is that although he claims that he understands evolution, he says things like "Both popular and scientific texts about evolution often say that 'nature' or 'evolution' has done this or that, just who is this 'nature' or 'evolution' as (an active) subject? It doesn't exist at all!"

Somehow, I think Mr. Ratzinger or Benedict or whatever the hell he calls himself hasn't fully understood the point of evolution. It doesn't require an "active subject" any more than gravity requires an "active subject" for things to fall to the ground. Which is exactly the point, is it not?

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I popped in to Silverprint today - it's a great little shop in London that sells primarily film material (they sell a few digital things, but it's primarily for printers using silver-based stuff - hence the name).

Good news. Ilford's "special effects" film, SFX 200, is in stock. Not just in stock in 35mm either - in stock in 120. I bought a roll. It's a really great type of film - it's basically a extended sensitivity black and white film that encompasses a higher range of highlights - more 'white'.

You also don't have to do anything complex to use it. Kodak is just finishing up their run of infra-red film, and Konica's infra-red film has been out-of-production for a few years now. Both of these films needed to be loaded specially. Kodak's film needed to be loaded and unloaded in darkness, and Knoica's needed to be loaded and unloaded in a dimmed light room (I remember loading it in my old bathroom).

SFX 200 can be loaded in pretty normal circumstances. You shouldn't load it in direct sunlight (really not a good idea for most film, as you can never be sure how light-tight your cassette is), but you can load SFX in the field).

Processing SFX is easy too - it's just the standard B&W process (which I have a podcast all about waiting to be edited).

SFX went out of prouction for a while - Ilford has basically gone bankrupt, and then had some deal with Ciba (the Swiss company that made the old Cibachrome process which later became Ilfochrome). Since then, Ilford worked out a deal with Harman. The new SFX has a "Harman Technology" label on it.

So many good films and papers are going by the wayside these days, and it's nice to see that SFX is back.

Currently, my film choice is Fuji Neopan@400, FP4@125 and SFX@200. I don't know what I'm going to use for colour, nor do I know what I'm going to use for paper. For development, I'm using Kodak T-Max, which Silverprint have in stock. Kodak are no longer in the film business, but still churn out silver developer - T-Max and HC-110.

Why am I bothering with film? Well, it's fun, it's quite cheap these days, my camera is built like a battle tank and - most importantly - using a different type of technology prompts a different creative response. Writing on a computer in a word processor or outliner guides you in a different way than writing on paper. Film photography has a different 'feel'.

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