Re: Who is the Intended Audience of the Markup Spec Proposal?

On Jan 26, 2009, at 4:01 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:

>
> Ian Hickson wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Jan 2009, Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
>>>  http://www.w3.org/html/wg/markup-spec/#audience
>> Thanks.
>> With this, I am happy to publish this working draft as a WD.
>
> Just so there is no confusion, would it be fair to say that you  
> would have no problem with the chairs interpreting that as  
> supporting a First Public Working Draft, in accordance to the  
> following definition?
>
> http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr.html#first-wd
>
>> However, I think it needs the following changes before progressing  
>> past WD:
>>  - How to parse documents that are written using the syntax defined  
>> in     that document (needed for tools intended to conform to  
>> the     specification, since otherwise there's no way to know what  
>> the tools     are supposed to do).
>>  - The DOM APIs and implementation rules for those APIs, since  
>> producers     of documents using the features in this specification  
>> need those APIs     to fully use those features.
>>  - Definition of the event model and task queue model for      
>> implementations, since that will be needed to define the APIs      
>> mentioned.
>>  - The Window object, browsing contexts, and its related APIs,  
>> since that     will be needed to define the APIs mentioned.
>> As it stands, the document is not appropriate for its intended  
>> audience.
>
> Would tracking these as issues suffice?

Perhaps Ian was overly subtle, but as far as I can tell, resolving  
these issues would result in the full HTML 5 spec, rendering the  
exercise pointless.

The fact is, there is a serious disagreement about whether the HTML5  
spec should be split into multiple normative parts according to the  
boundary of "specification of the syntax of a conforming document",  
and "everything else". The last time this was discussed, the chairs  
asked for a moratorium on further discussion of this topic (which as  
Philip Taylor points out, was never lifted and is presumably still in  
effect). It seems to me that publishing this document as REC track or  
as unspecified track but still claiming parts of it are normative,  
without actually discussing the underlying issue or coming to  
consensus (or at least a decision), is not good process. It looks like  
an attempt to sneak a decision about the issue past the group.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Tuesday, 27 January 2009 00:10:52 UTC