Re: WebIDL: how to address the various audiences and constraints?

On Sep 30, 2009, at 12:13 , Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> On Sep 30, 2009, at 2:43 AM, Robin Berjon wrote:
> On Sep 29, 2009, at 21:20 , Cameron McCormack wrote:
>>> As for having a simplified version first including only what’s  
>>> needed
>>> for those specs that need Web IDL done quickly, maybe.  HTML5 is  
>>> by far
>>> the biggest user of the esoteric ECMAScript features.  I guess I  
>>> would
>>> like to know, for the authors of dependent specs, how quickly they  
>>> need
>>> Web IDL done.
>>
>> WebApps has a document in LC that depends on it (Widgets 1.0: The  
>> widget interface), and it's a really trivial document to test — we  
>> don't expect it to be long before we can transition, but it is  
>> blocking on its dependency on WebIDL. I'd say it's at most one  
>> month before its progress is hampered by process alone.
>>
>> It's too early to tell but DAP has some low-hanging fruits that I  
>> would expect it to be possible to make quick progress on (famous  
>> last words — I know). Here we're looking at a 3-6 months window.
>
> As I understand W3C Process, a spec can enter CR with a dependency  
> that is still a Working Draft. What is not allowed is for a document  
> to *exit* CR and transition to PR or REC while depending on a  
> Working Draft - all dependencies at that point must be CR maturity  
> or higher. In the timelines above are you referring to completing  
> Last Call and entering CR, or are you talking about a timeline to  
> complete CR and enter PR? I believe only the latter would be blocked  
> by a delay in Web IDL.

To the best of my knowledge you won't find anything in Process stating  
what maturity levels you can reference; it's a PubRules thing.  
PubRules says:

   - "In general, documents do not advance to Recommendation with  
normative references to W3C specifications that are not yet  
Recommendations."
   - To transition to PR you should check that you're only referencing  
PR+ specifications.
   - To transition to CR you should check that you're only referencing  
PR+ specifications.
   - To transition to LC I couldn't find anything.

It's quite possible that other rules are documented elsewhere — these  
are the ones I found. I couldn't find the rule that is passed from  
mouth to ear about the ability to reference no more than two maturity  
steps below (which you seem to be quoting).

So based on the above it looks like you can't touch CR if you depend  
on something that isn't in PR. Note however that this isn't listed as  
a strict rule — it's phrased as sort of the recommended behaviour.

I'm fine with the two-steps rule but it'd be nice to have a pointer or  
agreement from the Team on that.

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/

Received on Wednesday, 30 September 2009 10:40:56 UTC