Re: CR exit criteria and features at risk for HTML5

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Giuseppe Pascale <giuseppep@opera.com>wrote:

> I agree about the necessity to get to Rec ASAP and issuing new Recs more
> frequently (html 5.1, 5.2 and so on), with the clear disclaimer (in case is
> not obvious) that specs cannot be bug free and new Rec may change (even in
> non backward compatible ways) if they were terribly broken and do not match
> reality (of course care should be taken to delay things to the next Rec
> where there is no good reason to have them in)
>

That [such a disclaimer as you suggest above] is completely unnecessary.
Nobody in their right mind that uses any standard at all assumes it is bug
free or will never change. However, specific published versions will not
change. They may have errata published against them, or new editions
published, or new versions published in the future, but for a given (dated)
version published in TR space, it should never have its text changed.


> Of course you could try to convince all organizations on the planet
> referencing HTML5 to change their way of doing references, but it seems
> easier to do a procedural change in W3C if the end result doesn't affect
> the technical spec too much (since we are all aware that new version will
> come and people will have to be prepared to update their references).


No procedural change is needed. The W3C has been living in the real
standards world for a long time and understands how it works.


>  Some organizations writing downstream specs that reference HTML5 will
>> write|publish their own compliance test regimes that effectively (i.e.,
>> operationally) define what is correct as far as they are concerned. Such
>> test regimes will also change over time.
>>
>>
> This is a critical point IMO. Who will write/maintain test cases to be
> used (referenced) by these compliance test regimes?
>

Other organizations do what they have to do in order to use W3C
specifications in contexts where compliance testing regimes are mandatory.
Clearly, they are not mandatory in the Web in general. And they've never
been part of the W3C process.

This thread has now gotten far enough off topic to warrant its end. Please
start another thread if you wish to pursue this discussion further. I've
said all I plan to say.