Re: SURVEY: Release "HTML 5 differences from HTML 4" as a W3C Working Draft? formal decision

On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 13:56 -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> On Jul 5, 2007, at 8:38 AM, Dan Connolly wrote:
> 
> >
> > On Tue, 2007-06-26 at 12:09 -0500, Dan Connolly wrote:
> >> [[
> >> Shall we release HTML 5 differences from HTML 4 as a W3C Working  
> >> Draft?
> > [...]
> >> See also results as they come in
> >>  http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/trdiff/results
> >
> > Thanks to the 84 WG members who responded to the question.
> > There is considerable support for the proposal, but not
> > consensus.
> >
> > After some discussion with related groups (
> > http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter.html#coordination )
> > via the Hypertext Coordination Group about the heartbeat
> > requirement, it seems a slip of a month or two is acceptable.
> >
> > The HTML WG co-chairs are persuaded by the argument that publishing
> > this diff document before the design principles and the spec
> > is somewhat backwards.
> 
> I don't understand this argument. The diff document is a factual  
> document meant to aid review (both internal and external) and does  
> not include any design decisions, it merely documents the state of  
> the spec.

That was the basis of the proposal to publish; but the
proposal didn't get consensus. Members of the WG didn't
agree that it would not convey design decisions. And the
chairs chose not to proceed over those objections at this time.

>  How, then, can it depend on the design principles document?

It more directly depends on the specification document.
But there is at least a perceived dependency: some members of
the WG said they want to release the design principles document before
releasing the spec.

> > It seems better to release this
> > differences document as a companion to the HTML 5 spec,
> > and to work on design principles meanwhile.
> 
> I'm planning to work on the design principles document, however,  
> based on the last time it was discussed, I think it will be much  
> harder to achieve enough agreement on this document to have something  
> that can be published. As far as I can tell, the remaining objections  
> to the diffs document are primarily procedural and about whether it  
> should be published before certain other things. But the objections  
> to the design principles document were substantive and called for  
> changes to the document in different directions.

Yes, I can see challenges to reaching consensus. But we're going
to try a little more.

> Given this, I think trying to publish the design principles document  
> first will lead to significantly missing the heartbeat requirement.

The chairs have negotiated a 2 month slip in our 1st WD deliverable
(see http://www.w3.org/html/wg/#sched ).
Come mid August, I expect we'll publish whatever we have even
in the face of objections (provided there's a critical mass
of support). I lean toward publishing all three documents (spec,
diffs, and design principles) together. 

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Wednesday, 11 July 2007 14:13:48 UTC