Re: Developing errata for 4.0

"Shane P. McCarron" wrote:
> >Here's how we do it today: I do the best I can to track errata
> >and when I have the time, I update the errata page (linked from the
> >Recommendation [2]). Periodically (no regular schedule established
> >and we've only done this once) we rerelease the HTML 4.0
> >specification with corrections and clarifications *only*. This involves:
> >
> >   - Correcting the body of the spec.
> >   - Listing the changes in appendix/changes.html (essentially
> >     the errata sheet)
> >   - Initializing the errata sheet.
> 
> Let me be clear on this...
> 
> The re-release would include any clarifications or corrections, but no new
> features.  Right?

Right.
 
> >Note that each errata sheet refers to a specific version of the
> >spec and its name and contents must be updated with each
> >re-release of the spec.
> >
> >If you or the WG decide to assume responsibility for managing
> >HTML 4.0 errata, you should have control over errata page
> >updates. Whenever you would like to issue a re-release of HTML 4.0,
> >talk to myself or Arnaud Le Hors about the document production
> >mechanisms and we'll gladly help with the changes page, publication,
> >etc.
> 
> Terriffic.
> 
> I assume that the base document is in HTML?  Or is it in some other hybrid?

The source documents are valid HTML. However, we process them (with Make
and Perl scripts) to produce the "target" HTML documents. The processing
includes:

 - generating a Table of Contents
 - generating indexes
 - generating lots of anchors and links (e.g., all the elements link
      to their definitions).

Arnaud has more experience lately with document processing due to what
they did with the DOM spec. I'm always happy to talk about document
production strategies and tricks.

 - Ian

-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) 
Tel/Fax: (212) 684-1814 
http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs

Received on Wednesday, 30 September 1998 18:48:09 UTC