Re: References to SMIL 2.1 in SVG 1.2

* Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
>We have two Recommendations, for example: MathML 1.0 and MathML 2.0.
>Both include a "Latest version" link. Does that mean:
>
> * Latest version of any MathML?
> * Latest version of MathML major revision 2.0?
> * Latest version of MathML major revision 2 any minor revision?
> * Latest version of MathML major revision 2 that is a Recommendation 
>   even if there are newer minor revisions?

Latest version of the document, which would be the latest version of
the MathML 1.0 Recommendation and the latest version of the MathML
2.0 Recommendation respectively. Just like the "Previous version" link,
which always points at the previous version of the document, not to
the previous version of the technology, and the "This version" link,
which always points at the very version of the document, not to "the"
version of the technology. In fact, everything in the document header
refers to the document, the title, the list of editors, etc. and not
to the technology. Makes perfect sense to me.

"Minor revisions" are part of the maintenance of a Recommendation,
such revisions correct minor problems without significant changes to
the feature set of the Recommendation and are typically the result
of merging the Recommendation with collected errata and proposed
corrections. An example is the Third Edition of XML 1.0, it is
really a minor revision of the First Edition of XML 1.0 even though
new but insignificant features have been introduced, for example,
empty xml:lang="" attributes have been introduced. For such changes
no change to the "version number" is made, consequently the latest
version link of XML 1.0 First Edition points at the Third Edition.
Makes perfect sense to me.

A different example is XML 1.1, while it introduces significant new
features it is not really the next generation of XML, so the minor
revision number is increased while the major revision number is not.
The first working draft of XML 1.1 does not cite XML 1.0 as previous
version and for each following version of the document the latest
version link points at the XML 1.1 Recommendation which is indeed the
latest version of XML 1.1. Once the Second Edition of XML 1.1 is
published, it will point at the Second Edtion, and if there is a XML
1.2 Working Draft and/or Recommendation it will continue to point at
XML 1.1. Makes perfect sense to me.

If you start talking about "XML 1", require that minor revisions are
indicated in the version number and have some new versions of a
technology that "supersede" the previous version while others do not,
then I agree that latest version links loose their meaning and finding
ones way through the Technical Report Jungle becomes difficult. That's
why I think terms such as "XML 1" (or "SMIL 2") should not be used,
that the revision number requirements in W3C's publication rules should
be changed, and terms like "supersede" should be well-defined (if it
is really a must that new versions supersede old ones, I don't think
that's a good idea).
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Weinh. Str. 22 · Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
68309 Mannheim · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

Received on Friday, 11 February 2005 21:26:40 UTC