Re: Support Existing Content

On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 11:28 +0100, Gareth Hay wrote:
> 
> On 2 May 2007, at 10:28, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> 
> >
> > In fact, I thought the HTML WG was about incremental evolution of  
> > HTML as opposed to breaking backwards compatibility for no good  
> > reason. (This is certainly true for the WHATWG, which is way some  
> > of your comments there may have been dismissed.)
> >
> I suppose your definition of a good reason differs from mine. I want  
> to fix the web, and make it a better place for authors and for  
> renderers, that is my reason.
> I guess HTML, or certainly the next evolution of it is going to  
> persist with the problems that dog it today.
> 
> Fine. I think today will be my last day on the list.

I'm very sorry it has come to that, or anywhere near that.

I consider it the job of the chair of a group to see that
people's time in the group is well spent. Evidently I haven't
been doing that job well enough. I'm concerned
that the amount of time it would take to do a good job
chairing this group is well beyond what Chris Wilson
and I have available.

Anne, I wonder if you really meant "dismissed". It's
acceptable to not be convinced by a comment, or to even
not manage to find time to read a comment. But I wonder
if it's ever reasonable to dismiss a comment. Perhaps
if it's not stated civilly or something.

Indeed, we're not after consensus by attrition.

Balancing the obligation to document existing practice
versus the opportunity to influence future practice is
complex.

I think this exploration of design principles has
been useful, but I wonder if we should take a break
from it for a while.

We will naturally return to some of these questions as
we discuss more detailed design requirements and features.

I would like to do so with the benefit of shared HTML
spec text to focus the discussion... perhaps tutorial text and
an evolving test suite too.

But if we don't have consensus on even that much, well...
the chairs will have to digest completely the objections
to be sure we understand the costs and benefits, and
I made a poor job of scheduling time for that; the
question closes Friday and I get on a plane for
Banff/WWW2007 Sunday.



> Thanks
> 
> Gareth
-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:48:12 UTC