RE: request a heartbeat publication of HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives

Sam Ruby wrote:
>
> Perhaps this will help.  Here is a log of commits:
>
> https://github.com/w3c/alt-techniques/commits/master
>
> Here is a way to reference a stable snapshot:
>
> https://cdn.rawgit.com/w3c/alt-techniques/955c8e6/index.html
>
> Note the "955c8e6" references a specific commit.  You can find the
> number associated with a commit by going to the first link.
>
> If/when a heartbeat is published, the date will be a part of the
> content and a part of the link.


Thank you for this Sam. While this is indeed useful to me, I think it adds
an additional layer of complexity for the non-initiated, and is frankly not
a very scalable solution for the hundreds of thousands of potential content
authors that are just looking for "the latest word" on how to create good
text alternatives.

While it is not my intent to hold up progress or frustrate the 'publishing'
process on this document, I think this current issue also underscores a
question I posed a month ago: "Who is Joe Developer?"
(http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2014Sep/0029.html)

I can state categorically that I work with a large number of content
creators and other "authoring-types" on a daily basis, and I can certainly
assure you that they don't know a Git from a Xit. As this Working Group (and
in fact the W3C overall) contemplates moving towards a new and different
'publishing model' I urge us all to remember that we are not shipping
software here, we are writing and publishing standards, and the audience for
that content is far larger and wider than just engineers who are used to
pulling and pushing commits as part of their day-to-day activities. Asking
these constituents to monitor multiple URLs just to be sure of which
reference they are referencing places a burden on those who should least
have to carry that burden IMO.

As noted earlier, I believe this will certainly be a topic of discussion
during TPAC, so I don't expect an answer now, but felt it was worth
re-surfacing none-the-less.

Cheers!

JF

Received on Tuesday, 14 October 2014 16:21:28 UTC