draft minutes from 13 September 2007 HTML WG Telecon

aloha!

minutes from the 13 September 2007 HTML WG are available as hypertext at:

http://www.w3.org/2007/09/13-html-wg-minutes.html

and as plain text, below -- as usual, corrections should be logged by
replying to this post, so as to create a thread, gregory.

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                                   - DRAFT -

                           HTML WG phone conference

13 Sep 2007

   Agenda

   See also: IRC log
   [http://www.w3.org/2007/09/13-html-wg-irc]

Attendees

   Present
   Regrets
          mjs

   Chair
          DanC

   Scribe
          Gregory_Rosmaita

Contents

     * Topics
         1. Convene HTML WG meeting of 2007-09-13T23:00:00Z
         2. Agenda Additions?
         3. Design Principles, DNRtW and following
         4. Forms draft status
         5. US/EU telcon time conflict
         6. Meeting Times
         7. Nov ftf meeting organization http://www.w3.org/html/wg/nov07
         8. November F2F Organization
         9. thoughts on 1st WD of HTML 5 spec
        10. Thoughts on 1st WD of HTML5 spec
        11. Issue Tracking
        12. usability testing video
     * Summary of Action Items
     _________________________________________________________________



   <zcorpan_> so what happens with publishing?

   <zcorpan_> i thought we were supposed to publish the spec in august

   <sbuluf> chris wilson's review is still due, right? perhaps that?

   <Lachy> zcorpan_, I updated update-markers.php with some code to
   commit changes to the DB.

   <Lachy> it's not finished yet, it still needs a better UI for
   confirming changes and the code may need a little cleaning up

   <zcorpan_> Lachy: great!

   <Lachy> you can test it out
   http://html5.lachy.id.au/status/annotate.html

   <Lachy> that test just submits directly to the confirmation script,
   bypassing the confirmation email

   <zcorpan_> "The changes have been confirmed,"

   <zcorpan_> ok

   <Lachy> check this to see that the changes were made
   http://html5.lachy.id.au/status/annotate-web-apps.php

   <zcorpan_> yep

   <Hixie> we were supposed to publish in june

   <zcorpan_> Hixie: yeah, i meant last i heard

   <Hixie> ah

   <Hixie> (not that i think we need to publish anything)

   <Hixie> (but if we want to publish something, it seems like it would
   be trivial to find something to publish and just put it out there)

   <sbuluf> i think chris wilson's review might be the cause

   <Hixie> why?

   <Hixie> it's not like i'm going to change the spec as soon as we get
   his review

   <Hixie> it'll hit the queue just like everyone else's feedback

   <Hixie> (though it sure will be nice to finally have a review from
   microsoft)

   <emeriste> I have no special knowledge of html and I am really
   grateful that all of you work on making it better.

   <emeriste> I want to promote a certain idea although I may not have
   the words to express it perfectly. You can understand the spirit of
   what I mean --- I want html to make typesetting mathematics as easy as
   putting a table on your page. Something like <math> (some sort of math
   syntax) </math> and it works.

   <hsivonen> emeriste: transferring MathML inside text/html is an open
   issue

   <emeriste> hsivonen - By open issue you mean it's something that you
   are considering?

   <hsivonen> emeriste: yes. it has been proposed but not rejected.

   <emeriste> anne -- I was talking to someone else in here about it few
   days ago, but I don't see them here now.

   <hsivonen> emeriste: lack of existing MathML buy-in from non-Mozilla
   vendors is a complicating factor considering getting two independent
   and interoperable implementations

   <emeriste> hsivonen -- I cant think of anything more important. Given
   what the Internet is, and the fact that all mathematicians, teachers,
   and scientists use the internet, it is astounding that you cannot mark
   up math in a trivial way.

   <hsivonen> emeriste: math in high on complexity and low on money. :-(

   <emeriste> hsivonen - mathML is probably fine. I'm sure a lot of
   thought has gone into it. All html has to do is recognize it between
   simple <math> tags.

   <anne> "simple"

   <emeriste> Yeah I told you I'm naive about things but you can
   understand what I mean anyway.

   <anne> actually, what I meant is that it's non-trivial to come up with
   a good solution

   <anne> I quoted the wrong word

   <emeriste> It should be 'rudimentary' html. Just like when you put a
   table on your web page. <table> some instructions </table>

   <emeriste> <math> some instructions (probably in mathML) </math>

   <hsivonen> emeriste: there have been at least three proposed ways of
   doing this, but we haven't been actively been pursuing this as a WG

   <anne> yeah, I agree it should be really simple if we do it

   <hsivonen> one might argue that politically the time is not right at
   the moment

   <emeriste> The best time would have been 10 years ago. The second best
   time is now. :)

   <emeriste> I don't understand namespace or mime or all that. I don't
   get why I need to use convoluted xhtml that takes me half a day to
   figure out. I'm sure there are reasons. I recognize my ignorance.

   <emeriste> The Internet is THE medium for communicating ideas. That is
   all the more so for technical ideas like math and science. For you
   good people to make math easy to communicate over the Internet would
   be a singular contribution to humanity.

   <DanC> anne, have you talked with mjs about design principles lately?

   <DanC> ah. hi mjs

   <mjs> hello DanC

   <DanC> still 1.4 Aug 16 at
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-design-principles/Overview.html

   <DanC> any news since then?

   <DanC> I'd sure like to get a 1st WD done.

   <anne> publish the spec :)

   <DanC> people pushed back on the diff document and asked for design
   principles, but now they seem more interested in @title and such.

   <mjs> I haven't had time to edit since then, but I will likely have
   time today

   <DanC> mjs, do you agree with anne that the design principles
   shouldn't be top priority?

   <mjs> DanC: I'd most like to see a 1st WD of the actual spec, but it
   would probably be harder to get people to agree to that

   <anne> (I agree it would be nice to publish the design principles
   though. Although when we initially wrote them up it was to explain
   some of the design rationale of HTML5 and then quickly turned into a
   rathole once exposed to public-html.)

   <mjs> on the other hand, I don't think there's anything we could
   publish that wouldn't cause at least some level of controversy

   <DanC> the amount of agreement I want/need for 1st WD decreases as
   time goes on.

   <mjs> anyway, my plan was to spend the rest of this morning processing
   design principles feedback, after I get to the office

   <anne> (I'm also not sure what the big deal is, Working Drafts are
   sort of expected to contain bugs and things people might disagree
   with.)

   <hsivonen> I'm not really here, but it seems that the terms "Cowpaths"
   and "Real Problems" are problematic

   <mjs> I would like to at least add an intro, and recast some of the
   principles where the names have spawned vast amounts of confusion

   <DanC> the big deal is that not everybody has experience with the
   Working Draft process, and there's a lot of mistrust.

   <hsivonen> As I see it, "Solve Real Problems" means "Don't Reward
   Concern Trollish Behavior" and "No Architecture Astronautics"

   <DanC> mjs, there's a telcon scheduled for today at 4p Pacific time;
   anything you can do by then is golden.

   <mjs> I have meetings all afternoon but the rest of my morning is free

   <DanC> ok, I'll relay your regrets for the telcon

   <mjs> I'll send a status update sometime in the early afternoon
   (pacific time)

   <DanC> great.

   <anne> By the way, I'm not sure if I should remain co-editor now that
   mjs is editing the document although I suppose I could make minor
   edits if requested...

   <mjs> I'd prefer to have someone available as backup at least

   <DanC> hmm... I'd like to have some redundancy....

   <mjs> if you don't mind

   <anne> sure

   <DanC> it's ok with me if you play mostly a back-up role, anne. I'll
   know not to expect you to know the up-to-the-minute status, defend the
   document against all comers, that sort of thing.

   <anne> seems the TAG didn't reopen their MIME type issue...

   <anne> oh well

   <anne> (issue-24, fwiw)

   <anne> mjs, since a while there are links such as
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-design-principles/Overview.html

   <mjs> anne: oh, cool

   <Philip> http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/Aa700736.aspx in
   Opera outputs '<msdn:herocontrol id="HeroControl1" totalherodiv="1"
   ... xmlns:msdn="http://msdn.microsoft.com"> </msdn:herocontrol>' as
   plain text

   <Philip> but I can't tell whether they were trying to use namespaces
   in HTML, or in actual real XML, and can't tell why it works in Firefox
   but not Opera

   <anne> that's because we support <![CDATA[

   <Philip> Ah - by "support", do you mean "parse stupidly"? ;-)

   <anne> something that goes for treating it differently from a bogus
   comment

   <mjs> I rewrote
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-design-principles/Overview.html#support-e
   xisting-content

   <mjs> further comments welcome

   <anne> Philip, first example I've seen where supporting <![CDATA[ is
   annoying

   <Philip> Hmm, Opera 9.5 still does <![CDATA[ x[y ]]> nonsensically

   <jgraham> mjs: I'm not sure you can start a sentence with "or" (at
   least it doesn't read well to me although I don't doubt that someone
   will point out that it's allowed per some supposed spec. for English
   grammar. However it's a very very minor point and not worth worrying
   about)

   <jgraham> Apart from that it looks great

   <mjs> jgraham: you can start a sentence with "and" or "but", so I
   think it's ok

   <gavin_> isn't starting a sentence with a conjunction a major point of
   debate among English language scholars? :)

   <jgraham> mjs: I'm just saying it fails the "acceptability test" for
   this native speaker

   <mjs> gavin: It is. But I don't care.

   <gavin_> me neither!

   <mjs> actually, striking the "Or," makes it read better anyway

   <jgraham> gavin_: I thought people had got past that and people just
   went with "do people fluent in the language think it's OK". Of course
   there are disagreements between different fluent speakers

   <Hixie> Or, you can just say that "or" is ok to use in stylistic
   situations. :-)

   <mjs> I changed it because the word was unhelpful

   <anne> Philip, yeah, no point improving it... we should probably
   remove support for it though

   <tH> heh, the default "G" icon for the firefox search box is stored as
   a data:image/x-icon;base64, but it's a gif

   <gavin_> tH: they're all x-icon, because our image guesser is good
   enough that it didn't matter

   <tH> gavin_: yeah, i just stuck a return at the top of the guessing
   function to see what broke and that was the first thing i noticed :)

   <gavin_> ah, ok :)

   <DanC> I think Chris W is chairing today, but I'm not quite sure

   <DanC> oops... agenda has leftover stuff

   <MikeSmith> oedipus - well, hoping you might volunteer

   i was going to

   i will

   <scribe> scribenick: oedipus

   <scribe> scribe: Gregory_Rosmaita

Convene HTML WG meeting of 2007-09-13T23:00:00Z

   <MikeSmith> Cba

   just wanted to make clearer verbiage about backwards compatibility
   especially targetted for i18n, a11y and device independence

Agenda Additions?

   <DanC> ACTION: ChrisW discuss XHTML name coordination with XHTML 2 WG
   in the Hypertext CG [CONTINUES] [recorded in
   http://www.w3.org/2007/09/13-html-wg-minutes.html#action01]

   <DanC> by way of agenda review, looking at actions from last time

   <DanC> ACTION: MikeSmith to write up a summary of changes for last
   [period of time], description of where changes go [WITHDRWAWN]
   [recorded in
   http://www.w3.org/2007/09/13-html-wg-minutes.html#action02]

   <Lachy> oh no, I dropped out :-(

   <DanC> on purpose?

   <Lachy> no, it was some connection error

   DanC: 5 minutes into meeting time -- any remaining agenda requests?

   <DanC> or did the office move eat you up, Chris?

   <ChrisWilson> yes, working on it.

   DC: will chair due to ChrisW's being inconvenienced by his move

Design Principles, DNRtW and following

   <ChrisWilson> Thanks, Dan

   <DanC> progress
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-design-principles/Overview.html 1.8 $ of
   $Date: 2007-09-13 21:14:39

   <DanC> and recent mail from mjs

   DC: abstract status intro and first 2 principles

   CW: reading mail

   DC: happy talked about what is supposed to be produced and what
   browsers should be expected to eat -- need to repeat -- people not
   hearing it
   ... pick up on survey input on do not break the web?

   CW: yes

   <DanC> http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/dprv/results

   DC: negative responses to question: "depends upon quality of wheel..."
   "disagree without comment"

   CW: consider specifying that technology i think covers it; open to
   discussion of solution editable

   DC: anyone think of better example

   CW: content editable implementations differ, wouldn't automatically
   accept

   DC: would take a lot of screen real estate for a good pertient example

   <ChrisWilson> Perhaps we should change the example to not imply that
   we're automatically accepting contenteditable

   DC: "not clear what a widely used..." -- a lot is people basically
   saying "depends upon wheel"

   CW: not automatically accept the wheel -- agree to disagree -- general
   case, if wheel already there, consider that feature over reinventing
   something new, unless demonstratively better

   DC: no actionable feedback in Do Not Reinvent the Wheel
   ... 5 strongly disagree with

   <mjs_> my plan for that principle was to retitle it to "Consider
   Existing Implementations" or something like that

   <mjs_> or "Adopt Some De Facto Standards"

   DC: comments express a lot of distrust; principles are just principles

   <mjs> so it's clear that it is a suggestion, not a mandate

   DC: [reviews negative answers]
   ... laura suggests dropping it

   <Lachy> proposed rewording of pave the cowpaths here
   http://www.w3.org/mid/46C0A255.7080407@lachy.id.au

   CW: earlier recasting of 3.3

   DC: good point

   CW: doesn't add a whole lot to explicitly have in there
   ... lightning rod -- cowpaths redundant

   DC: agree

   <ChrisWilson> Dropped again?

   <mjs> and for "Pave the Cowpaths" something like "Study Authoring
   Practices"

   <mjs> people say things like "we shouldn't pave this cowpath", but
   it's hard to argue that "we shouldn't study this authoring practice"

   <DanC> mjs, is Cowpaths redundant w.r.t. "... invent the wheel"?

   <DanC> http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/dprv/results#xenr

   DC: evolution not revolution

   <mjs> DanC, they are meant to be corresponding principles for existing
   nonstandard implementation features and existing practices in content

   disagrees from Jason White - "this is redundant"

   <DanC> [[ I suggest to change the principle to "Promote progressive
   design" ]]

   DC: [reviews disagreements]

   <Lachy> cowpaths isn't redundant. cowpaths is more about use cases,
   the wheel is more about actual implemented features

   DC: promote progressive design
   ... "words but not subtext" ?!?!

   <ChrisWilson> Side note - I think "and content will live longer"
   should be struck from the Evolution not Revolution principle. It's
   tangential

   DC: another promote progressive design
   ... solve real problems

   <ChrisWilson> DC asks when we can publish this

   DC: a little too tired to continue review; when should we publish this
   thing? negotiate internally about heartbeat requirements, and don't
   mind if take a little longer

   LH: edit and pass before WG with deadline

   <mjs> I think I can significantly improve it and reduce likely
   controversy in the next week or so

   <DanC> DanC: yes, after mjs finishes the pass he's engaged in, I'm
   inclined to publish

   <DanC> mjs, care to give an ETA? something like 2 weeks?

   <mjs> DanC, I think 2 weeks is a good FPWD target

   <DanC> thanks

   DC: that's all i need on DP for today

   LH: general comment -- IRC rewording these and a number of people
   disagree -- make specific suggestions, not comments like "like wording
   but not subtext"

   MikeSmith: real world wording -- cliches or truisms; using them as
   shorthand -- fundamentally opposed to wording, do so on point and
   suggest something constructive -- better

   <Zakim> MikeSmith, you wanted to suggest that some disagree comments
   amount to splitting of hairs over wording and we are always likely to
   have a certain number of such disagreements

Forms draft status

   DC: gregory's asked question once or twice -- chris lilley here so can
   answer
   ... looks in archive for CL's answer to query

   <DanC> Re: Web Forms 2 - version clarification, please? Chris Lilley

   DC: W3C Working Draft of august 2006
   ... to update TR/webforms some working group needs to publish
   ... this group could, but not right now

   GJR: that's why we are tasked to charter and scope

   <DanC> http://dev.w3.org/html5/web-forms-2/Overview.html

   DC: october 2006 draft could be pushed to TR
   ... differences are trivial
   ... mostly editorial, since august
   ... want to go over so that no one left concerned
   ... business of forms task force itself

   GJR: maciej on IRC
   ... one of the things i thought might speed was to work on a wiki so
   not lost in deluge of email
   ... ChrisL amenable to idea, but don't know upon which wiki to work

   DC: move to migrate mediawiki
   ... don't think grass going to necessarily greener on different wiki

   GJR: forms WG have wiki

   DC: ESW wiki fine by me; new wiki straight forward (but not strongly
   encouraged)

   Lachy: HTML wiki could swallow it -- easy to get lost

   <MikeSmith> [I agree that mediawiki would bring a new set of problems;
   but Rotan Hanrahan (who's quite familiar with both Mediawiki and
   MoinMoin) is convinced that Mediawiki causes much less pain

   DC: system team working on it; 22 wikis and don't want to give
   mediawiki to one until can get to all
   ... email and try a teleconference in meantime

   <Lachy> oedipus, I said: ESW wiki doesn't have talk pages, that causes
   discussion to get mixed into the articles and difficult to follow and
   edit

   DC: forms task force not stuck on anything in particular

US/EU telcon time conflict

Meeting Times

   DC: want to move US time 2 hours earlier on alternate

   CW: could do at 9

   DC: would have to leave for conflict meeting

   <ChrisWilson> (thats 1 hour earlier)

   <Lachy> I wonder if it would be possible to merge the ESW wiki and
   whatwg wiki, and then mirror it on both w3 and whatwg.org?

   DC: not available to chair on 27 september
   ... ChrisW can you chair on that date

   CW: going to be on the road -- in fact, conflicts with keynote speech

   DC: could chair the day after -- 21 september -- a friday

   GJR: what time

   <DanC> Fri Sep 21 at 1pET?

   1700 UTC

   <Hixie> Lachy: that sounds like a lot of pain for little gain, but
   from the whatwg side i'm happy for you to do that if you think it's
   worth it

   EDT is UTC -4

   DC: reschedule or cancel meeting on 27 september -- could reschedule
   but would have to be a week later

   <mjs> Lachy, Hixie: mirroring could be in the form of a CNAME

   <DanC> PROPOSED: to meet 21 Sep Fri 1p Boston time, DanC to chair

   <mjs> (if w3c is ok with that)

   <DanC> I'll confirm by email

   CW: first week of october

   <DanC> PROPOSED: to cancel 27 Sep

   <Hixie> mjs: i'm sure they'd want different branding too

Nov ftf meeting organization http://www.w3.org/html/wg/nov07

November F2F Organization

   DC: found middle ground between conferences -- announced that, so
   everyone should know
   ... on wednesday, plenary happening - have draft agenda -- there is a
   member tech plenary list -- suggest that whomever can get there 8
   november for plenary; we convene after lunch on 9 september
   ... 17 registrants and a dozen or so requesting invited expert status
   ... broad representation

   <Hixie> oh while we're talking abouth the plenary, i should announce
   in the interests of transparency and full disclosure that google will
   be funding james graham's attendance, and will probably be funding two
   other people though those details have yet to be finalised.

   <DanC> noted, hixie

   DC: continue to meet through lunch saturday morning

thoughts on 1st WD of HTML 5 spec

   DC: anything else about F2F?

Thoughts on 1st WD of HTML5 spec

   DC: detailed reviews coming in regularly; haven't done my audit of
   reviews in a while

   ChrisW: microsoft review still delayed - not before beginning of next
   week

   DC: how about before telecon

   CW: on eve of sounds like good plan

   DC: HTML5 spec going out at same time or after DP?

   CW: after

   GJR: after

Issue Tracking

   DC: Sam Ruby still not ready to jump in with both feet
   ... could use someone in this role; W3C still searching for permenant
   staff contact
   ... thoughts on triage team?

   CW: ???? (couldn't hear)

   DC: you want to keep the ball

   CW: yes

   DC: continue that action item, then

   <DanC> ACTION: ChrisW to start setting up a team to triage issues
   [CONTINUES] [recorded in
   http://www.w3.org/2007/09/13-html-wg-minutes.html#action03]

usability testing video

   DC: merits attention of entire WG
   ... [searches for pointer]

   Lachy: Joshue who wrote

   <Lachy> http://www.w3.org/mid/46DD6F27.6070608@cfit.ie

   GJR: there is a wiki page with links
   ... sliced into easily digestable portions

   <Lachy>
   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Sep/0103.html

   <DanC> From: Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie>

   <DanC> Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:43:51 +0100

   <DanC> with links to videos such as
   http://www.cfit.ie/html5_video/final/Table1.wmv

   http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/AccessibilityTesting

   DC: common user task -- can you find price of OJ on web site, look at
   how many succed and how many fail

   <Hixie> those videos are very interesting, i studied the header and
   longdesc ones in detail. has he updated the summary one yet? it used
   to be a dupe of the headers video.

   DC: one video allowing person to editorialize -- did i look at wrong
   parts?

   Lachy: rest similar

   DC: useful, but not what i was expecting

   GJR: guidelines for user testing?

   DC: worth celebrating in any case

   <Hixie> yeah you have to ignore joshue's comments as he editorialises
   :-) but the actual use parts are quite interesting

   GJR: should we set some?

   DC: cool that hixie really studying videos

   <DanC> good point, hixie.

   DC: end of prepared agenda

   <DanC> yes, some videos is a whole lot better than no videos

   <Hixie> i love studying them in detail

   <Hixie> it's a goldmine of helpful guidance

   <DanC> * Hixie would highly recommend not setting the bar high, we
   want to encourage input regardless of quality really, since otherwise
   we might see no input at all

   <DanC> ADJOURN.

   <Hixie> oedipus: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/ logs the /mes, iirc

Summary of Action Items

   [NEW] ACTION: MikeSmith to write up a summary of changes for last
   [period of time], description of where changes go [WITHDRWAWN]
   [recorded in
   http://www.w3.org/2007/09/13-html-wg-minutes.html#action02]

   [PENDING] ACTION: ChrisW discuss XHTML name coordination with XHTML 2
   WG in the Hypertext CG [recorded in
   http://www.w3.org/2007/09/13-html-wg-minutes.html#action01]
   [PENDING] ACTION: ChrisW to start setting up a team to triage issues
   [recorded in
   http://www.w3.org/2007/09/13-html-wg-minutes.html#action03]

   [End of minutes]
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    Minutes formatted by David Booth's scribe.perl version 1.128 (CVS
    log)
    $Date: 2007/09/13 23:55:10 $
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Received on Friday, 14 September 2007 00:05:09 UTC