Re: Proposal to Adopt HTML5 (progress on recruiting editors)

I support the general direction that Hakon is taking.

But on the same basis, editors from the HTML community with no knowledge
of edting international standards will produce the imperfect documents
that currently constitute most of the W3C 'standards' documents.

And just as it is impossible for the Chairs to filter in one direction
they will have the same problem in the other.

Having more than one editor and having one at least with competence in
understanding standard-ese, which bares little resemblance to normal
English, would be an advantage.

Despite what has been said on this forum, it is not possible to write a
standards document using the full range of meanings to phrases that exist
in the English language.

'table' has the complete opposite meaning in Europe and the USA.
'Concertation' in the rest of Europe is the reverse of what it means in
the UK. And words like 'are' 'must' 'shall' 'can' and 'should' have
various meanings  in English depending on your background and the time
they were uttered but have precise meanings in ISO documents.

I believe any editor will have a difficult time making any correct
decisions out of the current torrent of unstructured comment (using many
dialects of English and at various levels of competence). The chances of
two  or more editors getting it right are likely to be higher than one,
unless that one person has a complete understanding of  the needs of HTML,
the deficiencies of the English language and the ability to write formal
documents written in an English-like language.



>
> On 4/19/07, Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com> wrote:
>> A good way to avoid being out
>> under pressure is to require that all proposals and objections are
>> sent to this list.
>
> Indeed. Also, it seems that if an editor or editors are going to
> successfully assemble the HTML 5 spec based on the research and input
> of the HTML WG then those editors will necessarily have to understand
> the issues of and, more importantly, the mindset of this WG as a
> whole.
>
> Editors from highly technical non-Web backgrounds, for instance, will
> likely not make the decisions that best represent the WG as a whole.
> Obviously this can be screened for by anyone (including the Chairs),
> but might be a smoother process if proposals and objections are aired
> publicly, at least after someone is nominated as a candidate for
> editor.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Brad Fults
>
>

Received on Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:43:17 UTC