Re: WebIDL Spec Status

On Mon, 23 Jun 2014 22:05:55 +0100, Marcos <marcos@marcosc.com> wrote:

>
>
> On June 23, 2014 at 4:07:09 PM, Glenn Adams (glenn@skynav.com) wrote:
>> What is the plan, i.e., schedule timeline, for moving WebIDL to REC?

The plan is based on an editor who is provided by Mozilla, but who is very
often too busy to work on the spec.

>> We have now a two year old CR that appears to be stuck and a 2nd
>> Edition that I'm not sure has made it to FPWD.
>>
>> Given the high degree of dependency from other specs and  
>> implementations on this work, we really need to find a way to wrap up
>> this work or at least publish something reasonably stable.

That relies on someone to the the Work™.

> IMO, we should just concede that this document needs to be a Living  
> Standard (tm).

IMO (ie chair hat off) that would be a Really Dumb Idea™. While there is
no reason to believe it would solve the problem of Heycam's availability,
it would assume everyone using the spec the time to watch out for changes,
and is somehow in a position to change their implementations or explain
the problem in such a way as to convince the group. Given that this
requires a commitment on the part of many people that probably exceeds the
amount of time the editor himself spends, it seems a very expensive way to
try working around a relatively simple problem.

This would result in a fragile and probably increasingly fragmented
ecosystem, without the minimal measure of interoperability that is gained
by common references to known stable versions.

> Trying to move this through the W3C process is clearly not working. Even  
> if we were able to take the V1 bits to Rec (a lot of which is now  
> obsolete), the V2 stuff is already widely supported and heavily relied  
> on by browser vendors. IMO, it's a waste of everyone's time to try to  
> maintain multiple versions.

"Everyone" is not trying to do so. A couple of people in the whole world
are. A lot of everyone would benefit from the periodic publication of
stable versions. While nobody is offering an editor who can get the work
done, this argument is in any case academic (unless the editor's
availability is predicated on the outcome, in which case it would be mere
political machinations).

just my 2 kopecks

-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Tuesday, 24 June 2014 10:56:50 UTC