RE: [DRAFT] Heartbeat poll

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, John Foliot wrote:
> 
> The current draft is worse off, as it has been modified since April 29th 
> based purely upon Ian's ego and opinion, and not by consensus or 
> protocol.

It's clearly not based purely on my opinion, since I disagree with what it 
says (I think we should throw summary="" out completely). It was written 
in the exact same way everything else in the HTML5 draft standard was 
written, namely, by going through feedback of a technical nature and 
making determinations as to the relative merits of reasoned arguments and 
the lessons that can be learnt from objective research.


On Sat, 1 Aug 2009, Sam Ruby wrote:
> 
> John's two requests are detailed here:
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/0001.html

Thanks Sam.

The first request there is:

| Indicate in the current Working Draft that the ultimate fate of @summary 
| is an open issue (as opposed to a conformant but obsolete attribute, 
| which nobody has agreed to yet).  My preference would be to restore this 
| attribute to its current HTML 4/XHTML 1 status, but I can live with it 
| simply being an unanswered question at this time with *no* status 
| outside of open and in "limbo", as at least that is accurate and 
| truthful.

Done.

The second request is:

| More importantly however, is to remove the author guidance that today 
| explicitly contradicts existing, W3C approved Accessibility Guidance as 
| written in WCAG 2.

I don't know which author guidance that is. Could I request more specific 
feedback for this request?


On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> Building consensus sometimes requires compromise. So far I have not seen 
> a lot of willingness to budge from the accessibility faction, or even 
> willingness to consider that there might be more than one acceptable 
> answer. That makes me feel like it's not a good use of my time to 
> propose and advocate middle ground solutions.

For what it's worth, it's also making me feel like maybe I should have 
trusted my original judgement and just left summary="" as non-conforming. 
I've repeatedly asked for reasoned arguments and research from the "pro- 
summary" advocates, only to be faced with accusations that I am ignoring 
due process. For many years now I have been crystal clear on the process 
that I am following: bring forward reasoned arguments and data, and I 
change the spec. The reason I don't do what the PFWG have demanded (and 
there really is no other word for it) is that there has been zero 
reasoning given, just position statements with no reasoning. My e-mails 
asking for reasoning were faced with no response. I'm _still_ waiting for 
a reply to these e-mails:

   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jun/0173.html
   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jul/0262.html
   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jul/0766.html
   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jul/0778.html

...that has any reasoned arguments or data.

Over the past few weeks I have stopped changing the summary="" section 
because Joshue asked me to stop changing it in preparation for a vote. 
Since no vote has occured since that request, I'm going to resume 
responding to the few e-mails (two from Maciej, one from Murray) that I 
have pending on the subject in the coming days.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Saturday, 1 August 2009 08:05:17 UTC