Re: Rethinking HTML 5

On 2 May 2007, at 17:50, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

> At 01:41 +1000 UTC, on 2007-05-03, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>
>> Shane McCarron wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>> In the case of XHTML 2 the plan was always to have an  
>>> implementors guide
>>
>> What exactly is an implementers guide?  Would that contain normative
>> requirements, or just be an informative note?
>>
>>> that went along with it to provide the sort of information I  
>>> think you
>>> are talking about; but without confusing the authoring community  
>>> with a
>>> lot of data that, frankly, is very domain specific.
>>
>> Specifications are aimed more at implementers than they are at  
>> authors,
>> simply because it is vital that the spec can actually be implemented.
>> Book, tutorials and resources can be tailored to be more suitable for
>> authors.
>
> Sorry, but I don't believe for one moment that that will actually  
> work. If we
> want to see more conforming documents out there, the spec will have  
> to be
> made as easy to understand for authors (and authoring tool  
> vendors!) as
> possible.

We do however need enough detail in the specification for  
implementations to be compatible with one-another, which could easily  
get in the way. I think we should have a separate, non-normative,  
document for authors, providing all the detail needed for the authors.

> The past has shown that leaving that up to third-parties is a very,
> very bad idea: authors will not find the 1 decent tutorial  
> inbetween the
> 1000s of nonsensical ones.

Why would authors turn to the spec not other tutorials like they  
already do?

- Geoffrey Sneddon

Received on Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:08:53 UTC