Schedule for next HTTP 1.1 drafts.

First, the bad news: there isn't a new draft yet.

Second, the good news: as of early this week, things are actually
coming together, since the problems reconciling
caching with content negotiation and range was tracked down to
lack of shared understanding of key terminology.  For the first
time, I think the 1.1 draft is coming together.

OK, so here is the roadmap.

The remaining major material (part of the range spec) and some additional
solidifying material in the caching area will get edited into the
source of the document over the weekend.  Gods (which ever you prefer)
willing, I will submit a new ID for the 1.1 spec this Monday, which
will be substantially complete for the first time, and almost all
significant technical issues resolved.  I will announce it when it
happens on the W.G list; please grab it immediately, rather than
waiting for the ID editor to do his thing (which takes several days).

There are several caveats on Monday's ID:
	1) there will still be some minor areas not worked out completely;
this will be indicated in the text.
	2) the document will still have the current organization,
which is cumbersome (caching, persistent connections, content negotiation
should be discussed early on in the document).  It is not clear at
this time that we will have time to reorganize the document before
submission to the IESG.
	3) this draft will not have all the terminology problems
straightened out.  We only realized this week that this was the
source of the endless trashing that had been going on, and I won't
have time to try to incorporate any changes to clarify this.
	4) for those of you who may be looking at the document I made
available today, I make no guarantee about any material making this Monday's
ID I don't have in my hands by 10:00 AM Saturday EDT.

Despite the above, Monday's draft is the one that you should review
carefully.  We have time only for one further draft after this before
submission to IESG.  The latest that this second draft can happen is
May 2nd.  I have to go to a close friend's wedding on Friday, May 3rd.
(he was my best man, and I'm in the wedding party of his wedding).
This implies that the latest I can recieve comments to make the draft
happen is April 30, and may need to be earlier (I'll have a better
feeling after I see how hard getting the Monday ID out is.).  

Exactly how we'll handle comments is yet to be worked out; but as an outline,
I'd like them to go to the working group list (so there is a archival
record), and probably have the people who've been responsible for
particular areas vet the comments and get me the results.  (It is not
clear to me that I can single handedly wade through too many
comments).

In general, the earlier comments are made, the more likely we can
react to them.

Note that if there are no objections raised, we plan to integrate
the digest authentication draft into the last ID (John Franks will be sending
mail soon on this topic) of the HTTP 1.1 document.

Ok, in summary:
	Monday April 22		   ID draft 02 issue
	Tuesday, April 30, 9AM EDT Deadline for comments on April 22 draft.
	Thursday, April 25	   Decision point on incorporating digest.
	Thursday, May 2		   ID draft 03 issue

If the ID03 is deemed adequate by the working group,
Larry will submit it to the IESG for standards track approval.
Note that proposed standards can cycle (i.e. get reissued) if
we find some significant problem.  I don't know the IESG meeting
dates, unfortunately, so that is as far as I can go.

Note that there are several forcing functions on these dates outside
of our control:
	1) various product schedules, which we've been led to believe
have influence on what is going on.
	2) The next web conference in Paris, the week of May 6-10, which
lots of us will be at.
	3) I've not taken a day off for almost a month now, and I'm
taking a weeks vacation after Paris.  I'd like to get reacquainted with
my wife and daughter.  So if we don't make the above dates,
we'll miss by a significant margin.
			- Jim Gettys

Received on Thursday, 18 April 1996 18:26:03 UTC