Scheduling - last call, proposed recommendation, etc

I suggest we consider the document over the next week or so, and unless any
serious issues are raised publish a working group draft after the next
meeting which we expect to approve as the Last Call Working draft at the
meeting on 25 August. I would then suggest a four or five week last call
period. Normal W3C process requires two weeks but five weeks will give
developers time to ask questions and get feedback during the process and
would still enable us to resolve outstanding issues at a face to face meeting
in October (see my pervious email) and if necessary teleconferences before
asking the director to issue the guidelines as a proposed recomendation.

What is it, what does it mean (in my words):

Last call means that the working group is satisfied that the document (in our
case the guidelines document) is ready to be reviewed by the groups who have
dependencies on us before we submit it as a proposed recommendation.

These groups include SVG, SMIL, MAthML, WCAG, WAI IG. 

It is also a signal to people who have been meaning to review but haven't
quite got around to it that this is when they should make time, or they will
"miss the train".

During the review time we have to track all comments which are made. At the
end of that period we need to resolve all the issues raised before we can go
to the director and submit our document as a proposed recommendation.

This means that the Last Call draft is a Public Working Draft, but that we do
not expect it to change significantly any more. Specifically, unless major
issues are raised in external review we expect it to reflect pretty closely
the document that will become a Recommendation.

cheers

Charles McCN

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Tuesday, 10 August 1999 15:47:02 UTC