Re: ACTION-95, ISSUE-65: Plan to publish a new WD of HTML-5

On Jan 29, 2009, at 8:06 PM, Karl Dubost wrote:

>
> Le 29 janv. 2009 à 22:26, Maciej Stachowiak a écrit :
>> On Jan 29, 2009, at 5:47 PM, Karl Dubost wrote:
>>> Le 29 janv. 2009 à 20:39, Maciej Stachowiak a écrit :
>>>> That can be done in a number of ways - one would be to remove  
>>>> normative conformance claims.
>>>
>>> Instead would you accept to remove the normative claims from the «  
>>> full HTML 5 » spec on the parts which are addressing the content  
>>> model?
>>
>> I would vote against such a proposal, if it were put before the  
>> Working Group. The group already voted once to place HTML5 on the  
>> REC track, by an overwhelming margin, so I think the presumption  
>> goes against removing normativity from core parts of the spec.
>
> That clarifies where the real issue is.
> Thanks Maciej to be clear about that.
> I have the opposite position. :) As I said already.[1]
>
>
> [1]: http://www.w3.org/mid/3C578DEA-42B2-47ED-B409-D1FAE3F61480@la-grange.net

Yes, it's clear to me that members of this Working Group hold  
different positions. At least some people hold a position like the  
following:

(UNIFIED) Though some specific APIs, feature areas or shared cross- 
language facilities could reasonably be split into separate  
specifications, the core of the language (including syntax, parsing,  
processing model and APIs) should be specified in a single normative  
specification.

And others hold a view something like the following:

(SPLIT) The HTML5 spec should be split so that the definition of a  
conforming document is in a separate document from everything else.  
One document defines the syntax of a conforming document normatively,  
and other separate documents normatively reference it as to element  
definitions but themselves normatively define things such as  
implementation conformance criteria and APIs.

So far, the status quo of our drafts is (UNIFIED). We have not reached  
a resolution of the (UNIFIED) vs (SPLIT) issue as a group. But what  
we're thinking of doing now is as follows:

(DUPLICATED) The HTML5 spec continues to normatively define all  
aspects of the language, There is a separate HTML5 Markup Language  
spec which separately normatively defines only some aspects of the  
language.

It's not clear to me if anyone really supports (DUPLICATED) as an  
actual final outcome. Some advocates of (SPLIT) seem to support  
(DUPLICATED) as a temporary measure, on the path to what they really  
want. Other advocates of (SPLIT) would instead like to resolve the  
disagreement one way or another, rather than kicking the can down the  
road. Some may sincerely believe that this path is the best way to  
ultimately resolve the (SPLIT) vs (UNIFIED) debate, though they  
personally have no horse in this race.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Friday, 30 January 2009 04:46:37 UTC