RE: html4 vs html5 and "superseded RECs" when there isn't a new REC

It's partially covered by [1] that Steve pointed to in his AC post.  (getting TRs to more closely track editor's drafts - with more frequent TR posts is covered).

Changing these long lived (and virtually obsolete) RECs to place a note in them pointing to the latest WG draft of a new spec isn't covered.  It doesn't really belong in the process - because it can already be done.  But it is something the team could think about.  In a fairly sane world, some variant of html5 would be a REC now and everyone would be encouraged to use it.  As opposed to it being a REC 2 or 3 years from now.  A little note in the html4 spec indicating the current WG draft of html5 is widely implemented in Browsers would help a bit to ease the confusion about whether html5 is for now or sometime later.


[1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2012JanMar/0035.html 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jeff Jaffe [mailto:jeff@w3.org]
>Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 4:43 PM
>To: Carr, Wayne
>Cc: public-w3process@w3.org
>Subject: Re: html4 vs html5 and "superseded RECs" when there isn't a new REC
>
>On 3/7/2012 7:03 AM, Carr, Wayne wrote:
>> My original post was not issue 2 (what I was asking for was snipped out in
>what's below).   HTML4 isn't a superseded REC because html5 isn't a REC.   That
>was the point.  But, HTML5 is defacto the new html spec and it will take a very
>long time to get to REC even though it is widely implemented.  We should do
>something in the html4 REC to at least point to html5.
>>
>> The suggestion was to put a note in the HTML4 spec pointing to the latest html5
>TR WD.  (and keeping that up to date is a different issue - but it's better than not
>indicating anything in the old and out of date official REC).
>
>Having a hard time parsing issues and variations :(
>
>Do you think this was captured by anything written in Steve Zilles'
>memo?  If not, would you like to recommend a general "issue" which can be
>worked by the AB?
>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:chaals@opera.com]
>>> Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 3:05 AM
>>> To: Carr, Wayne; Marcos Caceres
>>> Cc: public-w3process@w3.org
>>> Subject: Re: html4 vs html5 and "superseded RECs" when there isn't a
>>> new REC
>>>
>>> Note - this is ISSUE-2 - if you add that string in mails about the
>>> topic they will be collected at
>>> http://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/issues/2

>>>
>>> On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:48:35 +0100, Marcos Caceres<w3c@marcosc.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wednesday, 7 March 2012 at 10:35, Carr, Wayne wrote:
>>>>> With HTML4 we have the formal W3C Recommendation for HTML, but no
>>>>> one would want that as the basis for a UA. It has been superseded by
>HTML5.
>>>>> But, people still write that html4 is the html spec and html5 is in
>>>>> the future. Obviously, that doesn’t reflect the Web Browsers out
>>>>> there which have embraced html5. But html5 is still years away from
>>>>> going to REC.
>>>>>
>>>>> It seems in this (hopefully) unusual situation,
>>>> Just wondering, was it not the same case with CSS 2.1 (and now with
>>>> many modules of CSS3)? And with XHR 1 and XHR level 2 also (with
>>>> neither XHR version going to REC, while XHR 1 was abandoned in
>>>> favour of just "XHR"…)
>>> Yeah, I think the situation is actually quite common.
>>>
>>>> XHR level 2 was originally published under:
>>>> http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest2/

>>> ...
>>>> What would be nice would be if HTML5 would dethrone the obsolete
>>>> XHTML spec from the URI (and we dropped the "5" from the spec, as
>>>> the WHATWG has done):
>>>> http://www.w3.org/TR/html/

>>> Actually, I think that is a far too simplistic approach to be useful,
>>> except to a small handful of the stakeholders. And I think removing
>>> the version token from the spec is not a helpful solution, as nice as it might
>feel.
>>>
>>> Having a pointer that describes the status of HTML at
>>> http://www.w3.org/TR/html/ might be useful - and it might need to be
>>> more complex than "latest draft, last 'heartbeat' publication, last
>Recommendation".
>>> There are plenty of people who use XHTML. There are people who use HTML
>4.
>>> There are people who use HTML5. And there are people who use HTML and
>>> don't actually know what they are using. If they want to look up
>>> "What is HTML" and they expect W3C (instead of Wikipedia, about.com,
>>> or their local library's CD- ROM encyclopedia of the Web) to explain
>>> it, we should think about how to provide different bookmarkable references
>for the different needs.
>>>
>>> (Which also feeds into the bibliographic references discussion Marcos
>>> kicked off a while ago. Did that result in any issues, actions, or
>>> conclusions?)
>>>
>>> cheers
>>>
>>> Chaals
>>>
>>> --
>>> Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
>>>      je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan litt norsk
>>> http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com

Received on Friday, 9 March 2012 18:34:13 UTC