Re: ISSUE-116: Would a separate document work?

On Aug 25, 2010, at 3:56 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:

On 08/11/2010 08:53 AM, Steven Faulkner wrote:

we have 2 documents currently published by the working group that have
normative requirements on use of the alt attribute in HTML5

Neither is authoritative or has the consensus of the working group.
Until the situation is resolved it is in the best interests of all
readers of either document to be made aware of the existence of the
other document to ensure that nobody is under the assumption that
neither document authoritatively defines the conformance requirements
for use of alt in HTML5.

A few questions.  Short version:

Could this "index of relevant documents" be a separate document?

Longer version:

This is a probe to explore if there is a possibility of amicable consensus, obviating the need for proposals, counter proposals, surveys, etc.

Putting aside for the moment the fact that neither is required to have consensus at this point, nor the fact that neither will advance very far without consensus, the question concerning Issue 116 is much more narrowly scoped.  It is talking about a simple link and neutral information.

I'll note that this is not the only such document that the HTML WG is producing.  The current list can be found down the right hand side of the HTML WG page:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/
http://dev.w3.org/html5/rdfa/
http://dev.w3.org/html5/md/
http://dev.w3.org/html5/2dcontext/
http://dev.w3.org/html5/markup/
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/diff/
http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-xhtml-author-guide/html-xhtml-authoring-guide.html
http://dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/

I also note that the term "HTML 5" is often an umbrella term that people use to encompass other things including WebApps, Device APIs and Policies, CSS, ECMAScript-262, and potentially many other things.

So... the questions I would like to pose to the group is:

(1) Would there be benefit to the development and publishing of an overview document for HTML5?

This would, in my opinion, be immensely helpful if not only because it would be something to which we could point people to. I have had a hard time explaining to people what HTML5 is or what the WG is producing, given the current use of the term.

(2) Is there somebody (or perhaps a group of people) willing to produce such a document?


In the spirit of "putting my money where my mouth is," I would be willing to help produce such a document.

(3) Would the existence of such a document satisfy everybody's needs, i.e., if it were to exist and get past FPWD could we then close ISSUE-166 by amicable resolution?

- Sam Ruby