RE: Script Element Processing (Was: [SVGMobile12] Question on details of when <script> elements execute)

Hi, Ian-

Ian Hickson wrote:
| 
...
| 
| You're a member of the working group. The working group is 
| collectively responsible for this. That includes you.
|
...
| 
| Yet you still agreed to have SVG 1.2 go to CR, you still 
| didn't raise an 
| objection when the disposition of comments was written, etc.
| 
...
| 
| The sheer amount of time I've spent trying to review SVG Tiny 
| 1.2, and the huge number of comments I've sent on it  
| trying to make it better, should be an adequate response to this.

You have indeed given many excellent comments.  When I found them vague,
however, I asked for more explation.  That seems sensible to me.  If you
somehow took this as a slight, it was not my intent.


| The Working Group _is_ its constituency. Don't hide behind 
| the concept of collective responsibility to disclaim 
| your own involvement.  It's as much your fault as any other 
| member of the working group. Your name is in the 
| list of the editors of the spec. That makes it your problem.

I am a member of the working group, and I did approve going to CR, for
reasons that have been exhaustively discussed on www-svg.  But I have only
so many hours in a day, and at the end of that day, I want to see SVG
succeed.  I don't think that endlessly cycling again and again through
revisions will meet that goal, though it would certainly meet the goal of
someone who has publicly stated that they don't want SVG to be published. 

Though I have only been involved with the SVG WG for a short time, and
influenced only a small part of the spec, I think that it is well done.  It
is certainly interoperably implementable.  The words you use to describe my
involvement ("disclaim", "fault", "problem") are rather perjorative, and I
don't think they are reflective of the reality of a good specification.


| Come on Doug. Look at the replies you sent me.

Yes, let's do.


| Here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2006Jul/0111
| My comment was specific, yet you replied asking what I meant.

You had made similar requests in the past, commenting on non-normative
language.  I was attempting to clarify if that was what you meant.


| Here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2006Jun/0112
| My comment was asking for a particular example to be 
| specified, along with 
| related behaviour, yet you replied with a huge four paragraph e-mail 
| hand-waving around the issue asking for me to "define" my request.

I did ask you to define your request, since you used the term "things like
this".  I found that overly vague.  Your clarification led to our refining
the spec.  Problem solved, no?

The bulk of the email asked if this might not be better handled in the scope
of a joint resource that would define these things for all related W3C
technologies.  I thought it was a good idea, and I still do (as do several
others I've talked to).  I thought that this would actually appeal to you,
since it would create conformity across browsers and make spec creation more
consistent and easier.  Isn't that your goal?


| Here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2006Jun/0095
| You said that you had fixed the issue and that I'd be able to 
| comment on the next draft, but then you released a CR less 
| than the minimum comment period after that draft was published. 

The CR (August 10) was 3 weeks to the day after the announcement of the
newest WD (July 21).  This is certainly an aggressive schedule, but it
should have been sufficient for you to lodge a complaint.  As it stands, the
change we made was very sound.


| Here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2006May/0086
| You said that you had fixed the issue but wouldn't tell me what the 
| changes were. You didn't publish the changes for more than 
| two months, but requested that I send my feedback in two weeks.

I did describe the changes made, though I didn't quote them, and you did
have three weeks after the publication to follow up (that's a week longer
than 2 weeks).  Again, I believe I satisfied your request.


| Here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2006Feb/0074
| I gave you some examples. You agreed that the examples were 
| very good, and then promptly dismissed the examples,  
| asking if they were even relevant, despite the fact that 
| (a) the specs in question answered your question, and  
| (b) the examples weren't required to make my initial issue valid.

That's an inventive reading of my reply.  I didn't dismiss your question at
all.  I asked a follow-up question, and put out a request for other opinions
on the matter.  I see nothing wrong in either asking for clarification, nor
in trying to reach public consensus.  As it happens, I don't think that the
specs in question did definitively answer the question, though my reading
was that they were most likely not likely candidates of the 'script' block
(the issue at hand).  Forgive me for giving you the benefit of the doubt and
inviting you to explain why you had a different reading.

Again, I believe that we did ultimately handle the issue in question
satisfactorily. 


| The list goes on (I was just looking at your e-mail to me in the 
| archives, going backwards from the last thread).

Well, if the trend continues, it seems it would show that where I thought
your comment was clear, I tried to make changes that you would agree with,
and were I found it vague, I asked for clarification first.

Certain things, of course, there was no way we could agree upon, but that
was mainly as regards the feature set.  On matters of tightening up the
spec, I typically deferred to you. 


| Maybe I'd be less disinterested in SVG at this point if I 
| didn't feel like you (personally as well as the entire 
| working group) were trying to avoid actually addressing 
| my comments all the time, instead of trying to write a  
| decent, high quality, interoperably implementable specification.

Why would I bother writing emails asking for clarification, and ask you
questions on IRC, if I were trying to avoid your comments?  That makes no
sense.  

SVG Tiny 1.2 is a good spec.  It is not perfect.  But it is interoperably
implementable; if implementors do see any discrepancies during CR, of
course, we will tighten it up even more.

Regards-
Doug

Received on Tuesday, 15 August 2006 08:10:28 UTC