MSE and in-band track registries

After initially recommending that In-Band registry follow the lead of 
MSE, the co-chairs discovered three problems.

The first, and most easiest to solve, is that we don't have a 
lightweight process for updating dated specifications published on the 
web site.  This is the subject of an open bug on MSE[1].

The second is that the registry points to W3C specifications with MUST 
requirements, and these specifications themselves have not gone through 
the IPR process.  While this was previously overlooked, now that it is 
known it will need to be cleared with the Director.

Presuming that is OK with the Director, we will need to ensure that no 
reference from MSE or HTML 5.0 to the registry does so as a normative MUST.

This lead us to conclude that the "microformats wiki existing-rel-values 
page" reference in HTML5 Section 4.8.4.14  "Other link types" [2] was a 
better example to follow.  This material is characterized by the 
following characteristics:

a) the referenced material is on a wiki which makes it easy to update,
b) the reference to the registry (wiki) itself is Informative,
c) the referencing text uses the MAY term when pointing to the material 
in the registry (wiki)."

This leads to the following recommendations:

MSE:
1. Change the text in Section 12 to use MAY (or at most SHOULD) instead 
of MUST.
2. Keep the MSE reference to the registry as Informative rather than 
Normative.
3. Move the registry itself [3] and its referenced documents to wiki 
pages (thus resolving bug 25581), and update the MSE specification to 
point to the new registry wiki page.

In-Band:
1. Ensure that all references to the registry use MAY (or at most
SHOULD) instead of MUST.
2. Keep the reference as Informative.
3. Move the registry itself[4] to a wiki page, and update the HTML5 
specification to point to the new page.

We believe the In-Band changes can be done during the upcoming HTML 5.0 LC.

Should the Director not be OK with the specs pointed to by the 
registries containing MUST statements, we will determine how to proceed 
based on the input the Director provides at that time.

- Sam Ruby,
on behalf of the HTML WG co-chairs

[1] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=25581
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#concept-rel-extensions
[3] http://www.w3.org/2013/12/byte-stream-format-registry/
[4] 
http://rawgit.com/silviapfeiffer/HTMLSourcingInbandTracks/master/index.html

Received on Friday, 6 June 2014 20:34:26 UTC