Re: An HTML language specification

Henri Sivonen wrote:
> The WHATWG copy of the spec already has low-bureaucracy maturity 
> indicators for sections. Managing different maturity levels of 
> different parts of what is now a monolithic spec in the W3C/IETF way 
> adds bureaucracy and causes artificial problems when seeking to do 
> honest normative cross-referencing.

You say "adds bureaucracy", I say "removes stability". Reasonable people 
can disagree.


James Graham:
> That sounds like a use case that may not be adequately addressed but 
> I'm not sure why that's related to the way the spec is organized. 

It demonstrates the incompleteness of the parser section. It is an 
obvious omission, imho. I don't mean to hold a bug report over your 
head, but I think it is clear that the consistency and stability claims 
made by monolithic document advocates are at least somewhat overblown.

> Does it really make a difference from your point of view as a 
> potential implementor whether the parsing section is in a document 
> that is formally marked Last Call (but likely with some references to 
> other documents that are not) or a section informally marked Last Call 
> in a larger document of varying states of completeness? 

Yes, because I find the change control for the HTML5 spec 
unsatisfactory. I understand why it had to be this way, with one editor 
optimizing his own context switching, but I think now is a good time to 
pull out the element definitions and the parser sections. The spec is 
frozen to new features, so this shouldn't be an intractable problem.

- Rob

Received on Saturday, 22 November 2008 21:49:38 UTC