RE: Deciding in public (Was: SVGWG SVG-in-HTML proposal)

I want to be clear on one point.  The chairs do intend to follow W3C process to reach group decisions,  so consensus will in fact be honored by this group's output.

That does not mean that our editor or editors may not perform edits that do not represent concensus; it does mean that those decisions are, as Ian said, not set in stone.

James Graham wrote:
>Sam Ruby wrote:
>> Would HTML5 have canvas at all if Apple hadn't created it?
>
>There is no problem with Apple (or whoever) creating an experimental
>implementation of a feature like <canvas>. The problem is if they bypass
>community review by shipping the feature before it is taken through a standards
>process.

...which will nearly always happen, btw.  Realities of shipping.

>By contrast consider the <video> element. Opera released a paper and an
>experimental implementation. Instead of just shipping their experimental
>implementation they brought the idea to the WHATWG where the feature has
>undergone considerable change reflecting the additional uses cases brought
>forward, as well as the broad range of expertise available. As a result the
><video> element will be considerably better designed and more useful.

Of course, it would be nice if that discussion instead happened under the IP policy umbrella present here in the W3C, instead of in the WHATWG (which to my knowledge has no patent policy) - particularly since in an IP-rich area such as video.

>Indeed, as
>Henri has pointed out, distributed extensibility (at least of the
>namespaces-in-XML kind) can lead to the problems associated with
>vendor-extensions becoming worse as the name of the vendor becomes attached to
>the extension, causing political difficulties for other vendors looking to adopt
>the feature (e.g. how likely would Apple be to implement <video> if it had to be
>written <opera:video> or even <video xmlns="http://opera.com/ns/video">?).

Not at all - but I would expect Apple to implement <apple:video>, and then them both to implement <video> as it were spec'ed.  (similar to rounded border corners, e.g.)  Otherwise, it sounds like you're suggesting that any browser should just ram their extensions in to the language and hope they'll be adopted.

Yes, in the short term, authors have to write n versions - but at least you can get compatibility.

-Chris

Received on Friday, 1 August 2008 17:13:53 UTC