Re: Conditions for not raising formal objections

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 8:04 PM MURATA Makoto <eb2m-mrt@asahi-net.or.jp>
wrote:

> If there is a new charter for the EPUB 3.2 REC, it
> should guarantee that widely used features will not
> be dropped even if they have interoperability problems.
> If this is not guaranteed, I will seriously think about
> formal objections from Japanese publishers.  Indeed,
> Japanese publishers use non-interoperable features
> by avoiding risky cases.
>
>
Makoto,

How interoperability is demonstrated is described in the W3C Process
document https://www.w3.org/2018/Process-20180201/#implementation-experience

> Implementation experience is required to show that a specification is
sufficiently clear, complete, and relevant to market needs, to ensure that
independent interoperable implementations of each feature of the
specification will be realized. While no exhaustive list of requirements is
provided here, when assessing that there is adequate implementation
experience the Director will consider (though not be limited to):

> * is each feature of the current specification implemented, and how is
this demonstrated?
> * are there independent interoperable implementations of the current
specification?
> * are there implementations created by people other than the authors of
the specification?
> * are implementations publicly deployed?
> * is there implementation experience at all levels of the specification's
ecosystem (authoring, consuming, publishing…)?
> * are there reports of difficulties or problems with implementation?

> * Planning and accomplishing a demonstration of (interoperable)
implementations can be very time consuming. Groups are often able to work
more effectively if they plan how they will demonstrate interoperable
implementations early in the development process; for example, developing
tests in concert with implementation efforts.

I believe we will have lots of problems if we write a charter saying that
our specification plans to include features that do not have independent
interoperable implementations. That goes against the very nature of what
W3C does.

But as I've said before, I do not think this will be a problem for EPUB.
The problems you mention are with CSS, and we are not going to profile CSS
in EPUB based on test suite results from CSS Writing Modes 3. We are also
not going to program EPUBCheck to reject files that contain characters that
may have improper rotations applied via text-orientation.

Dave