Re: [Powerbox] New draft based on further collaboration and prototyping

Hi Tyler,

On May 27, 2010, at 00:41 , Tyler Close wrote:
> With the help of Sony Ericsson and Mozilla Labs, we have updated the
> Powerbox proposal to address a wider array of use-cases and
> implementation environments. This new draft reflects feedback we
> received on the initial proposal, discussions with potential
> implementers and application developers and prototyping work on Chrome
> and Android.

Thanks a lot for this update, it is most interesting. Reading through it I find that most of my comments are of a rather editorial nature, and as such I will get back to them later. Most importantly I find that this draft is much clearer and presents a better defined approach to the problem.

> The current version of the Powerbox spec is ready for wider
> prototyping work and we look forward to collaboration and feedback
> from this WG. We would like to see the Powerbox become a W3C
> Recommendation from this WG.

I agree that this would be a good path to follow. The first step is to give it a home in CVS. I believe that you already have an account on dev.w3, so the simplest thing is probably that you add a "powerbox" directory to http://dev.w3.org/2009/dap/ and place it there. The next step would be to agree on what makes the draft "good enough" for a First Public WD. Apart from general consideration about quality and pubrules which you already know and which I'm not worried about, a general rule of thumb which we use in this WG is that ideally a FPWD ought to be roughly and to the best of one's guesses feature-complete (though of course it doesn't need to be perfect :) The reason for this is that it provides somewhat better protection against IP issues for everyone. If you think we're roughly there, then we can issue a call for consensus to publish the document. We'll deal with the delicious vagaries of Rec-track life afterwards.

Process question for Dom: do editors listed on a draft have to be formally members of the WG? The companies listed already are, so my understanding is that we're covered IP-wise.

To make sure that everything is in the clear, at the last F2F the group agreed on what we call informally "the Prague Doctrine"[0], which is essentially that we didn't want to pre-emptively decide between tradition/JS/host object and REST/Powerbox implementations. This means that we endeavour to produce APIs that can be bound to both views, but that WG doesn't wish to dedicate a lot of bandwidth to the wiring of those bindings (since this essentially means not spending a lot of telecon time on them, I doubt it will prove to be an issue though). As part of this decision I've offered to create a REST/JSON binding for WebIDL so that the mapping would be consistent. To date this has essentially been about me scribbling stuff down and tossing it into the trashcan but I might have a new take — either way suggestions welcome!

Note that if other editors need access to CVS, they should email Dom offlist with their SSH pubkey (and CC me).

Thanks a lot!

[0] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-device-apis/2010Mar/att-0154/minutes-2010-03-16.html#item04

--
Robin Berjon
  robineko — hired gun, higher standards
  http://robineko.com/

Received on Tuesday, 1 June 2010 15:07:05 UTC