- From: Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
- Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:28:57 -0400
- To: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- CC: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, Paul Cotton <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
On 06/18/2010 02:36 PM, Laura Carlson wrote: > Hi Sam and Ian, > > Sam wrote: > >> I think we need to work more on working together. > > The 18 June 2010 editors' draft states, "Work on this specification is > also done at the WHATWG. The W3C HTML working group actively pursues > convergence with the WHATWG, as required by the W3C HTML working group > charter." > > It is good to point this out in the spec and remind ourselves and > others of this goal. > > Convergence does need to take place. Having one spec would be very > beneficial. [1] > > Ian, what needs to happen from your perspective for convergence to occur? > >> The WHATWG >> document removes a reference to WCAG for... what reason exactly?" I'm >> especially puzzled as that particular difference was not motivated by >> any WG decision. > > In bug 9241 [2] I asked for the spec to say, "For guidance on > accessibility requirements for text alternatives authors should > consult WCAG 2.0" and link to WCAG 2.0. Ian did provide the link and > relevant text. Thank you, Ian. I guess I wasn't clear. I understand that Ian fixed a bug. What I don't understand (and the context here is the topic of convergence) is why Ian agreed to fix that bug, but only in the W3C copy of the spec. Either there is a problem with it or there is not. To fix it in just one spec is, in itself, an indication that convergence is felt to be an important criteria. In short, I believe that if we are jointly pursuing convergence, each every difference merits having a fully documented rationale. As to the other two examples: I understand that there are real customer requirements that the ping attribute attempts to address. I also appreciate that there are deep technical issues with the solution as documented in the current WHATWG draft. I believe that the current information in the "Is this HTML5?" section is deeply flawed in that it omits a crucial part of the story. I will further note that the areas where this attribute is described later in the spec have absolutely no marking indicating that they are not part of HTML5. To the contrary, they are each marked as being in "Last call" status. As to Atom. This happens to be an area of expertise of mine, and I was fully prepared to recuse myself from any decision relating to that topic. I will say that I do believe that the algorithm as currently described is deeply problematic, to the point where I don't believe that the problems are solvable. And to date, I have never seen anybody put forward a rationale for this feature, beyond a brief statement[3] that some unnamed person requested it, and Ian believes that the definition of this to be harmless. A statement that Ian has made without providing any evidence. I will further note that this item is also marked as in "Last call" status. I truly believe that if convergence is desired, then differences such as these need to be minimized, and -- where the differences are truly necessary -- appropriately and fully documented. I'll go further and say that if convergence is a priority (and I would suggest that it should be), the bar for differences should be considerably higher than "defining one seems harmless" as the divergence itself is actively harmful. > Best Regards, > Laura > > [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Jun/0320.html > [2] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9241 [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Apr/0419.html - Sam Ruby
Received on Friday, 18 June 2010 19:29:30 UTC