Re: Proposal for developing HTML 5 materials for Web *authors*

Karl Dubost wrote:
> There is a need for reference materials for helping authors to develop 
> and write HTML 5.
> 
> People have during the F2F expressed a will to participate to such 
> materials. There is a few possibilities:
> 
> * W3C Working Group Note
> * Dedicated wiki with pages having some locked sections (peer process 
> review) and free editing sections for example, etc.

I think it would be best if the ultimate goal was to publish a W3C Note, 
though it might be a good idea to make use of the wiki for some sort of 
collaborative editing process.

The advantage of the wiki is that is can handle many contributors 
easily, but as with everything that has too many authors, it very easy 
for inconsistencies in style, particularly writing style, to slip in 
which can make it messier and hard to read.  Just take a look at the 
state of the HTML pages on the ESW wiki to see what I mean! ;-)

So I think it would be best if there were one or two editors assigned to 
edit the spec itself in CVS based upon the contributions to the wiki. 
Then it would be the job of the editors to ensure consistency throughout 
the whole document.

I would be happy to contribute to this, and perhaps be one of the 
editors.  (I was a professional web developer for 4 years before joining 
Opera, plus I have some experience editing specs in WebAPI and WAF WGs, 
so I'm qualified for the role.)

> Some issues arose during the F2F and corridors discussions.
> 
> * Shall the syntax style be stricter than the one recommended by HTML 5 
> specification.
>   example:
>   <p class=intro>Readable Markup
>   <p class="intro">Readable Markup</p>

I agree with Henri and Maciej about distinguishing between conformance 
requirments and coding conventions.  It should encourage consistency, 
but not dictate particular styles.  And any best practices should really 
be best practices based on technical reasons, not just people's personal 
preferences.

I also agree with Henri about the document licence issue.  Could we 
perhaps use a dual licence, like MIT and W3C document licence, or use 
something like the WHATWG's licence for HTML5.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 11:13:17 UTC