Path to Last Call (was closing various issues)

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Aug 2009, Sam Ruby wrote:
>> I am interpreting Ian's response as a positive affirmation that other 
>> than issue 41, all of the remaining could be incorporated into the draft 
>> in a matter of days should the Working Group decide that a change was 
>> needed.
> 
> All of the remaining what?

Let me reconstruct the thread.  Staring with this email:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/1131.html

I specifically asked for you to look at the following list:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/1063.html

For reference, that's the "what".  My personal assessment is that issue 
41 is the only issue that you are not planning on working on that would 
take more than several hours to address, should there be a consensus 
that resolving the issue requires any change at all.  Note: I am 
explicitly not presuming that any specific issue will require a change, 
in fact, I would presume that in many cases what is currently in the 
spec is what we will all agree to.

> All I said about "a day" was that if we needed to write an I-D for 
> text/html, I could do that in about a day, but that I thought that was the 
> wrong way to do things.

And I said "of the rest, issue 41 is the only one that has a significant 
potential for taking significant time to integrate should it attract a 
proposal that we decide is the thing to do.  Let me know if you think 
differently."

>> My understanding is than Ian considers, for example, issue 8 as closed, 
>> though the Working Group does not.  In operational terms, that means 
>> that he plans no further action on that item until or unless he gets 
>> either new information or direction from the working group.  By 
>> contrast, the three I listed I was assuming that Ian was planning on 
>> working on, and indeed he confirmed that.
> 
> Rather than assuming anything about the issue tracker, I recommend using 
> the actual issue lists that the chairs have told me to maintain, namely 
> the bugs database, the pending list of e-mails, and the XXX markers.

I am a chair.  I have asked you to comment on the issues list.  In the 
specific case of ARIA, I asked you many different times and many 
different ways and over a course of months.

>> Issue 53, the subject of this email, is an example of an issue that Ian 
>> identified as only taking a few hours.  Again, I was simply asking Ian 
>> if the bulk of the remaining issues could also be done in an unspecified 
>> "few" hours each; and I am treating Ian's response as the closest I am 
>> likely to get to a "yes" from him at this time.
> 
> Please don't read between the lines of what I say -- I say exactly what I 
> mean, no more and no less.

I have specifically asked you to "Let me know if you think differently." 
  You did respond to that email, and you did not indicate that you 
thought differently.  Nor did you indicate that you did not understand 
the question.

So, let me try again: can you take a look at that list?  And tell me if 
you do think differently?

>>> To be more specific about my request to the Chairs, we need to decide 
>>> at least some of the following questions soon:
>>>
>>> 1) Should HTML5's update to the text/html and application/xhtml+xml MIME
>>> types be:
>>>     A) Inline in the HTML5 spec, as is the custom for other recent W3C
>>> specifications?
>>>         OR
>>>     B) Posted as an separate IETF RFC, updating the previous RFC for this
>>> purpose?
>>>
>>> 2) Do we need to decide the answer to #1 by Last Call?
>> Please forgive the indirect answer, but what we need by Last Call is a 
>> draft that enjoys the consensus of the Working Group.  I personally have 
>> no opinion on question #1 (or more precisely: I can live with either), 
>> and indeed, I view the proper role of a chair to be to not to make such 
>> decisions, but rather to assess the consensus of the group.
> 
> Could you assess the consensus of the group on this issue, then? I need to 
> know whether I need to do 1B above by last call.

I believe that we are going to need an accessible canvas by last call. 
I believe that we are going to need ARIA integrated by last call.  If 
you feel differently on either of these, I am willing to poll the group 
at this time on these matters.

Given that you said that issue 53 would only going to take a few hours, 
if it needed to be addressed at all, I don't believe that it is on the 
critical path, so I'm inclined to give Maciej and Julian a bit more time 
to work on it.

I'll go further and say that in my opinion the way that the single best 
way you could help accelerate our ability to reach Last Call would be 
for you to review the following ASAP, comment on it, and consider 
finding a mutual time that would enable you to participate in the next 
call on the subject:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/1125.html

>> 1) The only identified issues that I am concerned about as potentially 
>> requiring significant editorial effort once a decision is made are 
>> issue-35 (aria-processing), issue-41 (distributed-extensibility), and 
>> issue-74 (canvas-accessibility).  Of course, one may never know what one 
>> might find when one turns over a rock, but of the issues I know of, 
>> issues 35 and 74 are the ones that I believe that the working group 
>> would find that the current draft does not adequately address, and that 
>> these three are the only ones where the mechanics of incorporating a 
>> decision of the Working Group into a Editors Draft is more than a few 
>> days worth of work each.
> 
> Issue 35 is done. I am not aware of any bugs, e-mails, or XXX markers 
> regarding the other ones, so I can't estimate how much time they would 
> take -- I don't know what they are.

Issue 35 is still open.  I believe that for us to reach closure on this 
will require someone like yourself or Maciej or Henri to actually talk 
to someone like RichardS, StevenF, or Mike Cooper.  Yes, I understand 
that in theory this should be something that could be accomplished via 
email, but in practice it simply has not happened.

I previously asked you if you could make the call of 13 August.  For 
whatever reason, you did not attend.  I am now asking you if you could 
work with Michael Cooper and/or Richard Schwerdtfeger to find a mutual 
time in which you could participate, via phone, in a discussion on what 
remains to be done to complete issue 74.  And, yes, I am intentionally 
saying issue 74 as that is the one that at this point in time looks like 
it has the most remaining work needed to be done.  Issue 35 can proceed 
in parallel, perhaps even exclusively over email.  As can the closing of 
the other issues that Maciej is doing a yeoman's job of clearing out the 
underbrush.  Ones that look, at least to me, like they will require 
significantly less time than resolving how to make canvas accessible.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Sunday, 23 August 2009 00:18:40 UTC