RE: Proposed split of the HTML specification

> The HTML 5.1 spec contains substantial new features in many sections.

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/introduction.html#landscape documents the differences between the WHATWG and HTML 5.1 specs.

Do we have an enumeration of the "substantial new features" in HTML 5.1 that make it different from the W3C HTML5 Recommendation?  

> If we produced a split spec from HTML 5.0 we could pretty much move to Rec straightaway 

Would it be easier to create a split out HTML 5.0 spec that includes all the bugs fixes already included in HTML 5.1 by REMOVING the new HTML 5.1 features?

/paulc

Paul Cotton, Microsoft Canada
17 Eleanor Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K2E 6A3
Tel: (425) 705-9596 Fax: (425) 936-7329


-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Bateman 
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2015 4:54 PM
To: Robin Berjon; Paul Cotton; Philippe Le Hegaret (plh@w3.org)
Cc: Travis Leithead; HTML WG (public-html@w3.org); Erika Doyle Navara; chaals@yandex-team.ru; Steve Faulkner; Sam Ruby
Subject: RE: Proposed split of the HTML specification

On Thursday, June 25, 2015 2:47 AM, Robin Berjon wrote:
> > Q5:  Robin's proposed split [2] appears to apply to only HTML 5.1, 
> > will it also apply to HTML 5.0 for maintenance purposes?
>
> Any direct maintenance of the HTML 5.0 document is going to be labour 
> intensive because none of it can be automated. As you know, my 
> preference is always going to be towards automating as much of the 
> knuckleheaded stuff so that contributors can focus on technical issues.
>
> So my preference leans strongly towards moving forward with the split
> 5.1 document family. One advantage is that they don't need to move 
> forward as a block (except probably for the FPWD). This means that if 
> there are crucial fixes in some of them, they can be taken to Rec 
> relatively faster.

The HTML 5.1 spec contains substantial new features in many sections.
This makes it a poor choice for bug-fix maintenance to HTML 5.0. This Means our choice will be bug fix the monolithic spec or don't bother. With the interdependencies between sections we also likely won't be able to take the pieces to Rec if they depend on WD status parts that aren't aligned with HTML 5.0.

If we produced a split spec from HTML 5.0 we could pretty much move to Rec straightaway and then never touch some finished pieces (many of the definitions for example). Using the 5.1 document we are going to need to better understand the interdependencies to have a chance at moving any part forward.

Received on Thursday, 2 July 2015 18:27:58 UTC