Comment by no_wizard
1 day ago
Does it though?
A good spec really only needs clear principles. At a minimum, it should clearly explain what it does do, and also clearly explain what it does not do.
You don't need to have every edge case covered to build an API for datagrids. iOS has had native DataGrids for ages, Windows, macOS, Android. They all have this stuff built in. Other platforms have figured out how to provide these API surfaces.
Why does the web have to be seen as a special unicorn that can't have good baseline components like these platforms?
Are any of the examples you gave an open standard with multiple implementations from different companies? If Apple gets their implementation wrong, they can always deprecate an API and move forward. If they want to throw out an old implementation and deprecate that completely and start over, they can do that. The Web standard depends on agreement by multiple large organizations. That level of communication slows everything down. If they get an API wrong, we’re stuck with it forever.
That’s why the web is a special unicorn. It’s very different than those platforms. Web standards should be small and composable. They shouldn’t try to solve every problem. I get why you would want a data grid. Maybe in your work it’s a common pattern. But on the broader web and in all of the documents that are out there, it’s on a minute fraction of them. It’s simply not worth the effort. Too much effort, too little gain.
>Are any of the examples you gave an open standard with multiple implementations from different companies?
ECMAScript / JavaScript. It has evolved at a faster pace since the introduction of ES6, and we been getting new features every year for awhile now. Given the types of features they're willing to ship with the languag and that many of the same people working on the HTML spec work on ECMAScript, it seems 'niche' isn't an issue (simply look at how many features have been added specifically only for classes vs the amount that the language construct of class is actually used. Its tiny in usage, but they've added alot of class specific features)
Other notable examples include the C and C++ standards (there are differing vendor implementations depending on platform which while annoying are largely well known how to navigate). Linux operating systems - the amount of incompatibility between linux distros is shockingly small all things considered.
I'm sure there are others I'm not able to think of as well, but this isn't special to the web by any means.