[wbs] response to 'Call for Review: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group Charter'

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'Call for Review:
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group Charter' (Advisory Committee)
for Vivliostyle Inc. by Florian Rivoal.


The reviewer's organization suggests changes to this Charter, and only
supports the proposal if the changes are adopted [Formal Objection].

Additional comments about the proposal:
   I strongly believe SVG is a key technology that needs to see
continuing work, and would love nothing more than to support the
charter for a healthy SVG working group. However, despite some small
improvements since the previous proposal, I still think this charter
is not good enough and is setting the group for failure.

First, despite calls after the failure of previous charter for a broad
discussion involving not only a handful of powerful companies, but the
whole SVG community including invited experts, this charter seems to
have been developed based on private discussions only. There have been
no requests for comment to the www-svg list, or even to the narrower
mailing lists for working group members (which would presumably still
include all members as of the time the last WG charter expired). That
does not necessarily makes the charter bad, but even a good charter
won't do much if the group lacks attendees.

To partially compensate for this lack of public discussion, As I
believe input from non browser key contributors into this charter is
essential, I reached out the Amelia Bellamy-Royds, invited expert, key
contributor to SVG and co-editor of SVG2, while writing this. Her
comments and suggestions significantly enriched my review, and as we
ended up agreeing on mostly everything, this review also represents
her views.

Moving on to substantive issues about the charter:

1. Timeline: 

1.1 An updated CR for SVG2 in August 2017 does not make much sense.
There have been a handful of edits since the last CR that could be
worth republishing. However, there are 138 open issues in github,
including 95 tagged SVG-CORE (which means they affect the subject
matter of the chapters in the main spec, although that may include
feature requests and proposals in addition to issues). I find it hard
to believe these are going to be triaged and resolved and get a
disposition of comments within a month or so. 

1.2. The timeline for getting SVG2 to PR is beyond optimistic, and
well into impossible territory. SVG2 is a massive spec, it currently
does not have a test suite. I invite people to check how long it took
for CSS2.1, a specification of comparable complexity, to go from first
CR to PR. Even if the spec is edited to only include features with 2+
implementations, there are countless details and edge cases within
those features which need to be tested to demonstrate true
inter-operability. And if the spec is going to be edited to remove
features, then the August 2017 date for a revised CR is even more
unrealistic.

1.3. The timeline for SVG-AAM with a CR by February 2018 (and PR by
June) is not a whole lot more credible. Currently, there are some
major spec issues waiting on feedback, and very little implementer
interest.

Widely inaccurate timelines and milestones are nothing new, and a fair
few charters have that issue. So long as they don't affect the ability
of the WG to work, it is regrettable that we put garbage there
(especially if we are later going to evaluate the success of the WG
against that timeline), but it's not in itself a blocking issue.
However, in the case of this specific charter, it interacts very
poorly with the question of scope (see below), turning it into grounds
for objection.

2. Scope:

The charter says:

> As a primary focus in this charter period, the group will
> concentrate on the stabilisation and interoperability testing of the
>core SVG 2 specification.
> 
> "As a secondary focus, the group may address modules for new
> graphical features for SVG, only once SVG 2 is at the Proposed
> Recommendation stage" and once there is broad consensus on adding
> each such feature to the Web Platform. A requirements document will
> be used to collect together these features.

I am 100% in support of non SVG2 work being a secondary focus. Working
on that at a lower priority than SVG2 seems the best thing to do.
However, this phrasing forbids working on it at all until SVG2 hits
PR, which means that in the meanwhile, there will be no acceptable
place to have any discussion on new features. This risks splitting the
SVG community between maintainers and innovators, if it doesn't kill
the innovation part entirely. It may also mean that the WG might be
reluctant to split off from SVG2 a feature that would be slower than
the rest to mature, since it could then be considered a thing you
cannot work on at all until the rest is done. 

This in itself would be pretty bad even if that was for the short 1
year period the charter suggests, but given that I am convinced that
taking SVG2 to PR will take several times as long.

Here is a suggested alternative, that keeps finishing SVG2 as the top
priority, without being quite as suppressive of forward looking work
or as dismissive of people wishing to do that work.

> As a primary focus in this charter period, the group will
> concentrate on the stabilisation and interoperability testing of the
> core SVG 2 specification. As part of that testing, features which do
> not meet the stability and interoperability requirements for a
> Proposed Recommendation may be moved to separate specification
> modules, work on which would remain in scope, but at a lower
> priority.

> As a secondary focus, the working group may compile feature requests
> and proposals for new graphical features for SVG, and will provide a
> public forum for discussing these ideas in order to be able to
> determine broad consensus for adding such features to the Web
> Platform.  However, spec development and testing work on new feature
> proposals is not a priority until SVG 2 is at the Proposed
> Recommendation stage.

3. Testing

3.1. "test as you commit"

This is a laudable practice. Following this practice is likely to have
positive effects in the long on the quality of the specification and
on iteroperability. However, test writing and test reviewing are
chronically understaffed activities throughout W3C. Unless multiple
people (a single person cannot review their own tests) are committing
to spend significant time for a period of several years to write tests
and to review other people's tests, this will significantly slow down
work on the specification, possibly bringing it to a standstill.

Note that my main worry is not so much that people will fail to write
tests (although that may very well happen as well). Rather, it is that
tests written by editors mail fail to get reviewed for prolonged
periods of time, stalling progress and demotivating these editors.
This is even more likely to happen to contributors who do not work for
major browser vendors and cannot drag in co-workers to review their
tests.

This is a problem on its own, but this probable slowdown also makes
the prohibition on non SVG2 work until SVG2 PR even worse.

I suggest that this clause be removed from the charter, and that this
be left to the chair’s discretion. I would encourage him to make the
Working Group follow the "test as you commit" approach if and when
practical, but making it mandatory is likely to cause problems.

3.2. Focus of the test suite

The charter says that the SVG test suite should concentrate on changes
relative to SVG 1.1 Second Edition. I do not believe this to be a good
idea. Although the existing SVG 1.1 test suite will be a useful
starting point, it is not anywhere near a comprehensive test suite for
the un-changed parts of the spec.

The key motivation for focusing on SVG2 above other work is to achieve
greater interoperability. This can only be realized through thorough
testing. Artificially lowering the bar so that we can hit TR
milestones more easily is counter productive.


The reviewer's organization intends to participate in these groups:
   - Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group

The reviewer's organization:
   - intends to review drafts as they are published and send comments.
   - intends to develop experimental implementations and send experience
reports.
   - intends to develop products based on this work.
   - intends to apply this technology in our operations.
   - would be interested in participating in any press activity connected
with this group.

Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/SVG-2017/ until 2017-07-17.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Saturday, 15 July 2017 17:21:08 UTC