Re: FPWD of Additional Requirements for Bidi in HTML

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> Hi Richard and I18N WG,
> 
> On Mar 5, 2010, at 3:29 AM, Richard Ishida wrote:
> 
>> HTML folks,
>>
>> Just to let you know the expectations of the i18n WG wrt this 
>> document[1] which was published yesterday.  We do not expect the HTML 
>> WG to review and comment on it just yet.
>>
>> The document is still in early draft, and was published to facilitate 
>> ongoing feedback from bidi experts and i18n folks. It also contains 
>> some explicitly identified open issues.
>>
>> The plan is to obtain feedback as soon as possible from bidi experts 
>> and internationalization folks, then issue a new draft that 
>> incorporates the results of those discussions.  Only at that point do 
>> we plan to put the proposals to the HTML community and seek their 
>> comments and commitment. Depending on the amount of discussion that 
>> takes place, we would hope to publish the second draft in about a 
>> month from now.
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-html-bidi-20100304/
> 
> It's a little quirky to deliver feedback on the HTML WG's deliverables 
> in the form of a Working Draft developed elsewhere, and it might have 
> been better to make us more aware of this effort ahead of time. (I, for 
> one, was surprised to see  seventh Working Draft published with ours and 
> was puzzled that I hadn't seen it before.)

I don't believe that it has been established that bidi is an HTML WG 
deliverable.  All that I have seen stated is "Seven Documents Related to 
HTML Published".

http://www.w3.org/News/2010#entry-8735

> That being said, as long as the HTML WG gets the feedback in the end, 
> I'm not too concerned with the process of developing it.

I would modify that statement: as long as the groups are working 
together, I'm not concerned about which group publishes it.

>  From reading over this draft, it seems to me that most of this feedback 
> is ready to be delivered to the HTML WG right now. I see many specific 
> points that identify a specific problem in great detail, outline why the 
> current state of the spec doesn't work, and propose at lest one workable 
> solution. That's more than enough data to go into a bug report.
> 
> I would expect that bug reports on these issues would most likely 
> resolved expeditiously to everyone's satisfaction, and without any great 
> controversy. The only potential problems I see are with details of 
> syntax(*). I think those are best resolved within the HTML WG. I also 
> suspect some of the comments may be issues for CSS, not HTML, for 
> example the treatment of list markers. HTML completely defers to CSS on 
> list rendering. Either way, it would be good to identify those kinds of 
> issues ASAP rather than continuing to develop in a silo.
> 
> If the I18N WG would like these issues addressed before Last Call, I 
> strongly recommend delivering the feedback to the HTML WG as soon as 
> possible, ideally in the form of bug reports, one per distinct issue.

Against which component would such bugs be filed?

What I see published for bidi seems to meet the criteria for a 
vendor-neutral applicable specification, as described by section 2.2.2 
of the HTML5 Working Draft.

Given that this document has been approved for publication as a FPWD, I 
would suggest that for the moment the right approach is that technical 
comments follow the process defined in the draft itself: namely, "Please 
send comments on this document to public-i18n-bidi@w3.org", and that 
procedural arguments over venue (e.g., "I think those are best resolved 
within the HTML WG") be directed to the Interaction Domain lead.

> Regards,
> Maciej
> 
> * - Examples of potential syntactic quibbles: (1) It would probably be 
> better for the "bdi" attribute to act like a normal HTML boolean 
> attribute where only presence or absence is relevant, not the value; (2) 
> the name "bdi" is a bit obscure for a global attribute and may be prone 
> to typos; (3) "submit_dir" does not match the usual conventions for HTML 
> attribute naming. I raise these not to suggest changes to the draft but 
> rather to point out that the HTML WG needs to review these issues and 
> should do so ASAP.

I do encourage members of the HTML WG to review the draft, and report 
any issues that they find.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Sunday, 7 March 2010 18:09:51 UTC