Announcing the FLUID Project

[Mark Norton]

Cutting through the irony, I stand by what I've said based, in part, on 
having been the chairman (along with Jutta) of the AccLIP committee and 
it's predecessors in IMS.

:)

- Mark

Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:

>Hi Mark,
>
>A fable.
>
>Long ago, in the land of the ATRC, there were two projects that used XML 
>to represent user preferences, namely the Broadband project, and 
>Web-4-All.  The former defined a DTD for content preferences; the 
>latter, a DTD for adaptive technology preferences.  Both projects were 
>piloted, to a degree of success -- they were working systems that met 
>project requirements.  Oh, they were not perfect; indeed they had flaws 
>and needed improvement, but they worked.
>
>The two DTD's were brought together into one, and submitted to the IMS.  
>This submission formed the basis of many a discussion on how to 
>represent display, control, and content preferences.  Many were the 
>meetings to refine and improve the ideas embodied in the original work.  
>The result was the accessForAll preferences schema for the Learner 
>Information Package.
>
>The AccLIP was fed back into Web-4-All, and Web-4-All was improved 
>thereby.  Likewise, was the AccLIP adopted by TILE to transform content 
>in response to user preferences, and that begat the AccMD (accessibility 
>content metadata).  TILE begat TransformAble, which, in a way, begat Fluid.
>
>Moral:  it is *very* useful to have a working system upon which to base 
>some more general work.
>
>To use a more normal tone:  hey, I'm kind of new to the agile/extreme 
>methodology.  But, I see the merit in not spending a long period of time 
>time nailing down a fully complete design before having any evidence 
>that it will work.  You need to try out some ideas and get something 
>working.  Then, step back and try to find the general principles from 
>the working system, throw out the dead ends, and improve the system by 
>refactoring according to the discovered generalities, and/or according 
>to features that need to be added.  All the while keeping your eye on 
>the main goals.
>
>  
>