January 22 publication date [was: Transition and publication requests initiated for HTML5 FPWD]

Among my responsibilities as team contact for the HTML working
group is the responsibility of communicating with others on the
W3C team about publication dates of the group's deliverables. That
responsibility includes providing adequate advance notice about
our plans to publish, allowing adequate time to properly prepare
for each publication (which includes understanding that there may
be other documents in the pipeline for which publication dates
have already been negotiated and planned), and setting a target
date for publication that takes those factors into consideration.

After discussion with others on the team, the target publication
date I'm requesting for the First Public Working Draft of the
HTML5 specification is January 22. The considerations involved in
deciding on that as the target date include:

  - A previously announced publication moratorium has set December
    21 as the final date for anything to be published prior to the
    holiday break. In order for us to be able to publish on the
    21st, I would have needed to arrange for the publication well
    in advance (the W3C publication process rules requires at
    least one-week's advance notice prior to publication). So
    publishing on the 21st is not possible, and the next possible
    window for publication is after the holiday break, in January.

  - The significance of the publication of a new draft of a
    specification for the HTML language warrants taking more time
    to prepare for its publication than we would for most
    documents. Note that is has been 10 years since the
    publication of the final recommendation of the previous
    specification for the core HTML language, the HTML 4.0
    specification. Given that, we want to allow time to properly
    prepare for wide public announcement of this first new W3C
    draft of the core HTML language in ten years.

Based on the above considerations, I've asked that the target
publication date be set to January 22.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/
http://sideshowbarker.net/