Re: Front-matter

Alastair

> E.g. when I land on a W3C I'm not familiar with, I hit the "latest published version" link immediately, then scroll to the abstract. That link is noise to some people, but hiding that would confuse me very quickly.

And I'd agree with you on that one as reading latest is important. it
just goes to show that like accessibility, "one size fits one" with
specs too. :)
Serious I didn;t mean it was all noise - just it could probably be
improved with maybe some details moved some where else easily found if
required.

> My understanding (mostly from discussion with Janina) is that it is aimed at other spec authors, it should influence what they put in to their standards.

OK. That is important of course, especially given the need for raising
awareness of the issues. But the content itself should be created
inclusively, and that takes us full circle.

>> That could be as simply as a little restructuring of the necessary boiler plate material and providing less "academically rigorous" introduction for an audience that is no "spec-writers".

> I am in favour of that with the caveats:
> - It should be generally applicable. I.e. work the same way across all the specs so it is consistent.
> - There needs to be some analysis of what is there now, and a solid proposal to make it better in a way that works across the various specs.

+1000

> In the meantime, we can optimise the current abstract (see Jan's email) and work on the coga-usable and design requirements

OK!, I'll get to doing my tasks before the call :)


Steve Lee
OpenDirective http://opendirective.com


On 13 September 2018 at 11:08, Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
>> That struck me as being in danger of the tail wagging the dog or even "it's always been that way"  :).
>
> There is also the factor that consistency is more important than being perfect (which in the facebook era gets translated as 'people hate change' in their interfaces!)
> E.g. when I land on a W3C I'm not familiar with, I hit the "latest published version" link immediately, then scroll to the abstract. That link is noise to some people, but hiding that would confuse me very quickly.
>
>> Surely the audience for this and any W3C doc is anyone who wants to help shape the specs or use them to improve what spec-readers create?
>
> My understanding (mostly from discussion with Janina) is that it is aimed at other spec authors, it should influence what they put in to their standards.
>
>
>> So the tension I see here is between wanting to make the documents easily accessible to everyone who might want to contribute to the spec formation and keeping a consistent structure... That could be as simply as a little restructuring of the necessary boiler plate material and providing less "academically rigorous" introduction for an audience that is no "spec-writers".
>
> I am in favour of that with the caveats:
> - It should be generally applicable. I.e. work the same way across all the specs so it is consistent.
> - There needs to be some analysis of what is there now, and a solid proposal to make it better in a way that works across the various specs.
>
> From your later email, that fits into the second 'prong'.
>
> In the meantime, we can optimise the current abstract (see Jan's email) and work on the coga-usable and design requirements... which I hope gets me back in Lisa's good books 😉
>
> -Alastair

Received on Thursday, 13 September 2018 10:22:27 UTC