Re: Concerns about new section "predefined vocabularies"

On Wed, 13 May 2009, Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
> I'm very concerned about what's going on here in the spec -- see 
> <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#vcard>.
> 
> This mainly replicates information from the IETF vCard spec (RFC 2739). 
> I realize that the author may think that that spec is not sufficient; 
> but the right way to fix this is to participate in revising it (see 
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-07> and 
> <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/vcarddav/>), not by creating a copy in W3C 
> space.

The intent is not to replicate any information but to describe how to 
reuse the preexisting vocabulary in a new serialisation.


On Thu, 14 May 2009, Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
> In the meantime, the spec also replicates information from RFC 2446 
> (iCalendar), soon to be obsoleted by 
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-calsify-2446bis-09>. See 
> <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#vevent>.

This is similarly not replicating information but attempting to merely 
describe the rules by which one can reuse a well-established preexisting 
vocabulary in a new syntax.


On Fri, 15 May 2009, Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
> Procedural - the WG is working on trying to find consensus on all 
> sections of the spec; sections without consensus are to be removed (at 
> least that's my understanding of the process). Also, the editor himself 
> announced a "feature freeze" quite some time ago. So, why are we seeing 
> these new sections without *any* prior discussion?

There were literally months if not years of prior discussion on these use 
cases (primarily on the list hosted by the WHATWG, which this working 
group is chartered to work with).


> Spec Size - the spec already is big, and there is no evidence that this 
> needs to be specified *inside* the HTML5 spec.

Whether it is specified within the same document or in a separate document 
to which HTML5 normatively refers doesn't seem to make any difference to 
the complexity of the platform. I don't understand the desire to exchange 
fewer larger documents for more smaller documents.


> Extensibility - the current chapter copies terminology from RFC2426, but 
> misses it's extensibility hooks, and thus fails to mention things that 
> have been defined later, such as the IMPP type name.

Could you elaborate on this? As far as I can tell the microdata mechanism 
is quite extensible.


> Parsing - for some types, parsing rules are being rephrased from 
> RFC2426. There is a risk that they diverge.

Could you be more specific?


> Versioning - the IETF is revising vCard, see 
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-07>. Is HTML5 
> going to freeze the vocabulary at a version that the IETF is currently 
> obsoleting?

I don't see any reason why we would, no. In fact I was informed by the 
calsify work in the development of the vEvent section (for example I did 
not provide anything but the minimum support for repeating events, since 
it is proposed to remove them).

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

Received on Tuesday, 9 June 2009 22:51:34 UTC