Re: charter all set now?

Hi Chris,

It's a little difficult to parse the diff marks provided compared to, say, 
having a diff-marked version.  So hopefully we are not missing anything 
significant, but most of the diffs look fine.

There is only one diff-marked section that jumped out as really different 
from what the Forms WG otherwise understands as its mission, as expressed 
in charter mission statement.

The mission statement seems to more accurately reflect our understanding, 
which is that it is the Forms WG mission to *develop* specifications that 
cover forms on the Web.

Yet the description of the dependency between the Forms WG and the HTML WG 
says:

"The Forms WG will work with the HTML WG to ensure that XForms 
Transitional processors will accept the HTML Forms developed by the HTML 
Working Group."

The last part 'developed by the HTML working group' is problematic because 
it is the mission of the Forms WG to develop forms on the web, accounting 
via the joint task force for the forms requirements foreseen by the HTML 
WG. 

Despite this one case, I would say that my experience so far with the HTML 
WG suggests that their own opinions about how forms for the web are to be 
developed stems mostly from the fact that they do not feel bound by any 
statements expressed in a charter other than their own, despite the fact 
that you originally wrote them together.  They have expressed this 
directly, so this means that any statements of clarification would need to 
appear in both charters, not just the forms charter.

For example, there is a lot of confusion about the meaning of 
'architectural consistency' and when I point to the key examples you give 
in the Forms WG charter, such as the expectation of "conversion from tag 
soup to *equivalent* XHTML serialization" or "following design principles 
such as separation of presentation from content", the response I get is 
that these are expressed in the forms charter so they are not binding on 
the HTML WG.

That sounds an awful lot like the HTML WG feels it is the HTML WG's 
mission to develop specifications that cover forms on the web, which of 
course undercuts the Forms WG mission and discourages motivation for Forms 
WG members to participate in any kind of joint task force (despite my best 
efforts to encourage otherwise).

==============================================================================
As a separate issue, there also seems to be some kind of diff mark around 
the sentence below, a sentence which I find to be speculative at best and 
punitive at worst:

"Previous work on XForms 1.0 has  found success in the enterprise market 
but relatively little traction in the mainstream, browser sector."

I think XForms is having no problems in the "mainstream, browser sector" 
as quite a lot of XForms are delivered to today's web browsers using the 
extension capabilities built into those browsers by the browser vendors 
themselves, most notably javascript and  AJAX (aside from the obvious 
basic render capabilities with HTML and CSS).   I have pointed this out in 
the past, along with the fact that browser makers themselves also added 
plugin support and access to the DOM as further ways for *other vendors* 
to innovate and expand on the web without needing direct coding from 
browser makers.  The web isn't restricted to just the features that are 
directly supported by web browsers.

I think it would be fair to rephrase "but relatively little traction in 
the mainstream, browser sector" to something more accurate, such as 
"despite having only indirect support from features available in modern 
web browsers."

Cheers,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM: Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer





Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org> 
Sent by: public-forms-request@w3.org
06/26/2007 03:32 PM
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Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org>


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Subject
charter all set now?







Hello public-forms,

When the forms wg charter was approved by the AC, there were still a few 
loose ends - name of the mailing list, link to its archive, some spelling 
and consistency issues. These have all been fixed in place.

W3C staff are about to send another message to the AC announcing these are 
all fixed - so before doing that we wanted to be sure it *was* all fixed. 
Please have a quick look and let me know within 48 hours if there is still 
something left to fix up.

For convenience her is a textual diff of the current charter and the one 
announced to the AC:
 http://www.w3.org/2007/06/forms-diffs-1.7-1.14.txt

-- 
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@w3.org
 Interaction Domain Leader
 Co-Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG