Re: Planning to close EXPath Community Group due to inactivity unless we hear from you

Hi Liam,

Thank you for the detail. I am hearing:

* Mild pushback to combining groups.
* The EXPath CG may become active again within the year

I propose that we check in again in a few months, and then again around March 2025. If there’s still no
activity at that point, I think we should close the group. It can later be re-opened if new activity starts.

Thank you,

Ian


> On Jul 5, 2024, at 2:39 AM, Liam R. E. Quin <liam@fromoldbooks.org> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 2024-07-01 at 08:36 -0500, Ian Jacobs wrote:
>> 
>> I’d like to focus on the question: what value is the group providing?
>> 
>> If the group is providing value, then it would be great to understand
>> what that is, and to communicate to more people who might also want
>> to participate.
> 
> The EXPath specs are widely implemented and are used not only in XSLT
> but in raw XPath, in XQuery implementations, and elsewhere.
> 
> The CG is quiescent right now because there hasn't been any change in
> XPath or XSLT since the 2016/2017 W3C recommendations.
> 
> The documents are consulted (you're more likely to know how often than
> i, but i know they are used).
> 
> It’s my expectation that we will start to see updates, probably later
> this year or early next year would be my guess.
> 
> The work is separate from XSLT and XQuery and base XPath; however, we
> do have a single group (qt4) for work on XSLT and XQuery and XPath. So
> there are really only two groups, not lots, for this work. There’s a
> lower threshhold for the expath work, as not all implementations are
> required to support it.
> 
> In principle it could be a single group, but that isn't how it's been
> organised in the past, with different goals and different people taking
> the lead.
> 
> If they were combined (and documents could still be updated in both of
> course), would EXPath become some sort of subgroup?
> 
> I would not be surprised to see expath membership increase when there's
> new activity. The group exists to fill in gaps needed by users but that
> are not filled in by the main specifications, for a number of reasons,
> in some cases because of a lack of consensus. So combining the groups
> might actually block expath from going forward.
> 
> Sorry for a long answer; i hope that's clearer.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Liam Quin, https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/
> Available for XML/Document/Information Architecture/XSLT/
> XSL/XQuery/Web/Text Processing/A11Y training, work & consulting.
> Barefoot Web-slave, antique illustrations:  http://www.fromoldbooks.org

--
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
https://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel: +1 917 450 8783

Received on Friday, 5 July 2024 14:25:53 UTC