Simple API discussions will pause in 3 hours - chair's decision

Sometimes the Chair has to ring a little bell...

 

We have just a few days left before the Seoul meetings commence and much of the Simple API has been agreed. There are still some arguments about names, which are minor and thus easily addressed without causing issues. There are some good observations, such as the probable need for parameter-less factories. Then there are other more substantive arguments about the balance between methods that are "convenient" and those that are "robust and efficient". And there's still the question of extensibility, and eventual evolution to an Advanced API.

 

However, we are not going to resolve the more substantive issues by email over the next day or two, and we need to have some common document with which to commence the work in Seoul. Several hours of focussed interactive work can achieve much, as we demonstrated in Boston and Dublin recently.

 

So, mindful of my obligations as a W3C Chair to ensure we make progress (preferably with consensus), to ensure that we have a common stable starting point for next week's work, I am suspending further updates to the API from this afternoon. If there are more comments, please make them here by 15:00UTC.

 

I request Jo, the person who is capturing the resolutions and proposals in the text of the API document, to do what he can to reflect the most recent comments on this list. That includes the comment about empty constructors and removal of the overused "simple". Any more substantive comments that appear in the next three hours should be mentioned and/or incorporated if possible.

 

All other arguments about naming, convenience/robustness, extensibility, efficiency shall be taken up during next week's formal two-day meeting, the hub of which will be located in Seoul, Korea and will also include remote participants. Anyone having strong technical proposals/objections should fine-tune their contributions in the few days that we have left, and ensure they are ready to present next week.

 

This mailing list will remain open for discussion of the evolving API, but there will be no changes to the API document after today, until we convene at Seoul.

 

It is now 11:30UTC and if possible I would like to see the stable (and probably controversial!) draft circulated by 18:00UTC.

 

I would like to commend the participants for their recent energetic contributions, and hope this is a good sign for the work we need to do next week.

 

---Rotan Hanrahan, Chair, W3C DDWG.

Received on Wednesday, 27 February 2008 11:39:21 UTC