Re: Wrapping Up

On Dec 21, 2011, at 21:54 , Jeni Tennison wrote:

> Ivan,
> 
> On 21 Dec 2011, at 09:27, Ivan Herman wrote:
>> I am just wondering. Do you think it is possible to give some more 'weight' to the two publications that the TF has produced? I know this cannot be before the end of the year, but the 'charter' of a task force is not such a rigid timing as that of a working group. The TF is under the SWIG, ie, it is perfectly o.k. to publish an IG Note for both documents (microdata->RDF and the one you produced). What it would require is to publish a working draft first to give a larger community a possibility to comment (that just means getting the two editor's draft through the publishing process, I can help in that), and then close the work by publishing an IG Note with possible comments included. I believe both can be done in January.
> 
> I think it makes sense for the HTML Data Guide to go through whatever it needs to go through to be published as a proper Note. I imagine that will be largely administrative effort, and if you're willing to put the time into making that happen during January then I'm happy to support that.

Yes, I am happy to do that in January as soon as we both are back on board...

> 
> On the other hand, I think that the microdata/RDF document really needs longer term attention, particularly as, like you say, it can't become a Recommendation until microdata becomes a Recommendation, and that's not going to happen in January. So I would rather pass that on to a WG to take forward on the Recommendation track.

What I am afraid of is to let it fall between the cracks. The issue, at this moment, is not which Working Group would pick it up or whether we would have to create a new, dedicated working group (I am slightly in favour of the latter). The issue is that we cannot publish a recommendation at this point, until HTML5 in general, and microdata in particular, is not a recommendation. Think of the pending issues around the <time> element that affects the mapping; think of the multiple type issue that, though Hixie currently is against it, may evolve in future, think of the differences between the whatwg and the w3c documents on microdata and how that will evolve in future. The only thing a WG would do is to publish a draft and wait... and that would kill any WG. (There is also a formal issue: a W3C Recommendation is supposed to refer to fixed documents, ie, recommendations only. There is a good reason for this, as this case clearly shows.)

That is also why I believe we should publish a Note even if, as Gregg says, there are some open issues. If the TF cannot give a final answer to those, then they should be added as open questions, but publishing what we have as a Note would really give it much more weight than leaving it as a document on a mercurial repository. It will be then my responsibility (or my successor's if it takes too long:-) to pick this document up as an input to a WG when HTML5 finally gels.

Cheers

Ivan




> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jeni
> -- 
> Jeni Tennison
> http://www.jenitennison.com
> 
> 


----
Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf

Received on Thursday, 22 December 2011 07:56:11 UTC