Re: Some thoughts on a new publication approach

I like the general idea. More comments below.

On Mon, 2013-10-21 at 16:26 +0200, Robin Berjon wrote:
> As most good ideas it can turn into a meaningless automatism after the 
> reasons behind it have been forgotten. I think that it should be noted 
> that given the availability and broad distribution of a public editors' 
> draft, the Heartbeat Requirement becomes meaningless. TR-space should 
> just be editors' drafts — modulo some small differences and additions.
> 
> There are three snapshots that are required for the patent policy: FPWD, 
> LC, and REC.
> 
> For familiarity, I am assuming git concepts here. But they can be 
> translated to another system (though git would seem like a likely 
> implementation choice).

One point that I'm not sure you're addressing: the never-ending tension
between the recommendations and the living specs, e.g. HTML 5.0 and HTML
5.1 for example. HTML 5.1 is for implementers: it contains the latest
thinking and directions. We also like to have users looking at 5.1 for
ideas and feedback. HTML 5.0 is for lawyers, product labeling, and for
normative references. Users should also look at it to understand which
features is more stable. There is always the possibility of pointing
users only to HTML 5.1 and have marks in it to indicate which ones are
part of HTML 5.0. Other variations are also possible (using caniuse for
stable marks, etc.). It seems to me that more guidances to working
groups and editors to address the tension would be helpful as part of
the publication approach. CSS tries to address part of this by using
shortnames (eg /TR/css-text and /TR/css-text-3) but that doesn't provide
relief to the editors who have to maintain two editors' drafts.

Philippe

Received on Wednesday, 23 October 2013 14:45:50 UTC