Posix sucks, Linux sucks, I want my compatibility back MailCopiesTo: never 2139

Bill Laird

HTML spec leaves a lot freedom to the browser. A browser can be compliant, but you can't expect the output in different browsers to match pixel by pixel and that's supposed to be a feature.

Besides, these days, most of troubles with incompatibility lay in CSS and JavaScript implementations. I haven't heard anyone complaining about HTML incompatibilities (but I've heard a rant about WML incompatibilities yesterday).

The point is that bugs get fixed, features get implemented and incompatibilities get ironed out given enough time (unless there's an opposing business interest). In the meantime, developers who have to work with the imperfect implementations would profit from knowing exactly which parts of a particular OS are not up to the standard.

For example, this web page is extremely useful:

It also briefly explains why POSIX is modular and what that means, so I'll omit that here.

I don't think so. Diversity of interests go directly into the standard, so POSIX leaves things unspecified when there's no consensus and there are things for which one can claim to be the examples of a "standard way of being non-standard".

But most of the things are unambigous and reasonably well implemented in OSs which claim conformance. There are conformance tests (which can't catch all bugs in implementations), but I'd expect OSs which have pbutted to be feature complete.

Now there's a problem with conformance tests and OSs which don't have a for-profit company backing, because there's a cost1, so a lack of a certificate doesn't automatically mean a lack of conformance. But then, the OS developers usually know if their OS is feature complete or not and what's missing.

And when the users push a bit for standard compliance, things get done faster.

1 Perhaps there is no cost for the free operating systems. I seem to remember some discussion about that, but my recollection is hazy.

-- .-. .-. Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ( ) ceremonial.