Re: FW: Administrivia: Update on the relationship between the WHATWG HTML living standard and the W3C HTML5 specification

On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 08:20:37 -0400, Steve Faulkner  
<faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:

> This post by the former editor of HTML5 may be of interest to working  
> group participants
>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012Jul/0119.html
>
> In it hixie makes some, what I believe are spurious claims, one of them  
> being;
>
> "The WHATWG effort is focused on developing the
> canonical description of HTML and related technologies"
>
> The claim that HTML the living standard is canonical appears to imply  
> that the requirements and advice contained within HTML the living  
> standard is more correct than what is in the HTML5 specification.
>  I do not consider this to be wholly that case, in particular in regards  
> to author level conformance requirements and advice, where the HTML  
> standard has no special claim to authority, it is not the domain of  
> browser vendors to decide what is good authorin practise and any  
> authoringrequirements that go beyond implementation realities.

FWIW, I don't feel the same way.

I have no problem with the whatwg HTML living standard (and prefer it  
because it's a living standard). It's the only one I care about. I don't  
look at the w3c version at all and completely ignore it. I'm also happy  
with Hixie's editing, responding to comments and handling of issues (and  
really happy with the WHATWG process of using the mailing list for issues  
and discussion (public-html here is just full of bug report notifications  
(and has been like that for a long time, but started out right like the  
whatwg list still is))). I'm also completely fine with WHATWG's acceptance  
that what browser vendors and what they implement (or refuse to implement)  
dictate to some extent how things are specified, required or recommended.

In short, hixie's claims are all good to me. And, I appreciate his  
tolerance of the divergence and the efforts (by all involved) mentioned in  
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012Jul/0119.html>.

<http://annevankesteren.nl/2012/07/passion> describes exactly how I feel.

-- 
Michael

Received on Tuesday, 24 July 2012 10:18:51 UTC