Re: Preparing to launch the Forms Task Force ...

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Laurens Holst wrote:
> 
> Question is, if the W3C ‘takes over’ the WHATWG spec, will the 
> WHATWG respect the takeover and stop working on them, or will it keep on 
> developing their specification in parallel? And if it stops, maybe, as 
> all specifications now also have W3C equivalants, the WHATWG does not 
> have a purpose to exist anymore?

The WHATWG isn't going to stop; however, we could, with permission from 
Apple, Opera, and Mozilla, have both this HTML working group's 
specification and the WHATWG's specification be the same actual document 
(just with different headers and styles). If we do this, I would be happy 
to act as editor for this working group's specification, and would ensure 
that it and the current Web Applications 1.0 specification stay exactly in 
sync (by simply editing one document). This is how the Web Forms 2.0 
specification was edited in the WAF working group -- the version published 
by the WAF and the version published by the WHATWG at the same time were 
identical, built from the same sources. In fact it's also how the WAF XBL2 
specification and the Mozilla XBL2 specification are written: they are 
built from the same sources and therefore stay exactly in sync (I am 
editor for both the Web Forms 2.0 and XBL2 specifications in the WAF, and 
edit the WHATWG Web Forms 2 draft and the Mozilla XBL2 document).

If the HTML WG and the WHATWG don't publish the same specification, then 
I, on behalf of the WHATWG, will ensure that the two specifications remain 
consistent and compatible, by ensuring that the WHATWG specification is 
always a strict superset or more detailed version of the HTML WG spec.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'