WebIDL evolution, publications, etc (ACTION-36)

The issue of dependencies on WebIDL came up in this group (and others) and there was a short discussion. In fact, this was an open action item for me for a long time.

Philippe le Hégaret, Domain Lead responsible for WebIDL, too, made a list of where we are. Reproduced below with his permission:

[[[
- We're looking at publishing a new LC at the end of the month or
beginning of April.
- This LC will be a subset of the existing WebIDL spec, ie without the
unstable features and to allow documents such CSS3 Selectors to move
forward. So, unless you're using advanced features, that spec will be
enough for you.
- CR should be short since the intent is to reflect what's currently in
use in other specs. We'll do like Infoset to test it basically. In fact,
we might even try to skip CR.
- so we could have a REC for WebIDL by the beginning of the fall I think
- if you're not using any [Supplemental], [Optional] things, you can
link to one of the DOM specifications instead for basic types such as
DOMString [1] and link to OMG IDL as a general reference for IDL.
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/core.html#BasicTypes
- if you're using things like [Supplemental], you could copy the
definition into your spec. I just did that for the Web Performance spec
in fact. Matt is also looking at this for the Geolocation API.
- The timeline of the more advanced spec hasn't been established yet.
]]]

I am not 100% where it leads us for the API work, and whether we would normatively refer to WebIDL in future; you guys should tell us where we are. If there is indeed a LC and the end of the month, we can look at it and decide whether we are fine with it or whether we have to move away from WebIDL.

Ivan

Tracker, close ACTION-36

(I am not sure Tracker understands such statements in an email, though:-(

----
Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
PGP Key: http://www.ivan-herman.net/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf