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

Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>, 2009-01-27 15:19 +0200:

>  On Jan 27, 2009, at 05:12, Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
> > But as it stands now, the draft is in part a conscious attempt at 
> > experimenting a bit with doing things a little differently -- at
> > trying to offer a contrasting alternatives to test both some of the 
> > assumptions/choices that went into the design of the HTML5
> > spec (e.g., the choice you made to use prose descriptions for the content 
> > models) and also those that went into the HTML4 spec (in
> > terms of that document's scope and structure).
> 
>  To me, the it looks more than experimenting "a bit". Implementing the system 
>  for producing "HTML 5: The Markup Language" seems like no small undertaking.
> 
>  I think others could better understand the reasons in favor of publishing 
>  "HTML 5: The Markup Language" as a WD claiming normativity if you could 
>  elaborate on why you judged this experiment important enough to commit so 
>  much effort to it.

Because I believed there was a certain amount of demand for it (as
documented by the open tracker issue in the group) and because I
couldn't convince anybody else to edit it. And because I found
that I had needed to invest significant time myself in discussions
about the possibility of a "language spec" and I couldn't see how
there would be any way to fairly judge whether it might be viable
or not without actually drafting it and carrying through with work
on it, in good faith, to take it to some reasonable state of
completeness.

>  I realize that everyone decides what they volunteer their time for, but the 
>  choice of taking the initiative to re-express an area that "HTML 5" already 
>  covers seems significant when considered in the context of the possibility 
>  of opting to edit areas that aren't yet covered, such as the rendering 
>  section to name one that actually overlaps with the *informative* parts of 
>  "HTML 5: The Markup Language". I'd like to understand the significance 
>  better.

I guess I would have to say it seemed to me we had a bit more of
an timely need to try to get some kind of resolution about the
"language spec" discussion than we did to get the rendering
section or whatever else completed.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/

Received on Thursday, 29 January 2009 08:46:14 UTC