Re: [ALL] Distinguishing editors drafts

At 10:16 AM 7/6/2004 +0100, Jeremy Carroll wrote:
>... key thing is the subheading instead of reading
>
>"W3C Working Draft 10 June 2004"
>
>reads
>
>"W3C Editor's Draft 17 May 2004"

I heartily endorse this approach.

Some editors are inclined to make everything appear as close to
'final' published form as possible.  However, as we generally need
to edit the title section anyway when the document moves to /TR/,
it's not a problem to modify the document maturity ("Editor's Draft"
vs. "Working Draft" in the process.

I prefer explicit clarity.

>Another aspect that should read differently is the "Status of this Document". Technically that part of the document belongs to the W3C team (i.e. Ralph), hence omitting it is plausible (the QA note takes this line), although as a reviewer I prefer to have some text.

The Director, Team, and Webmaster may modify the Status but
the editors are strongly encouraged to make the Status section
accurately reflect the version of the document as it is in the Web.
It is very appropriate to describe the status of this particular
editor's draft, for example.  Like Jeremy, I appreciate it when the
editor's of a document tell me something about what it is I'm reading.

> With the OWL Test Cases I tended to have the editors drafts come out as
>===
>Status of This Document
>
>This is an editors' draft and has no official status. The rest of this section is fictitious.

No need to be fictitious.  Tell it like it is.  The document's maturity level
is better documented as "presented to the WG for consideration as
a WG Working Draft" than as "no official status".

>... [[Intended status]] ...

That's a helpful string to delimit text that does not yet apply but that
warrants review and/or endorsement.

>The reason for worrying about this is merely to avoid a misunderstanding by some member of the public, that some text that has not been approved, has a higher standing than it in fact does.

not just the Public but the rest of W3C as well.  (not disjoint, I realize)

Thanks for raising this, Jeremy.

Received on Wednesday, 7 July 2004 15:08:14 UTC