Re: Thoughts on starting the SVG 2.0 spec

Erik Dahlstrom:
> IMHO it would be nice if the publish version was not tracked by
> the version control system at all until it was put in datespace
> (separate location). The w3 mercurial server should instead just run
> the necessary scripts after each commit/push, and keep an editor's
> draft copy up to date that way, but separately from the VCS.
>
> There's really no need to keep updating and checking in those copies
> manually like we do at the moment. It's just extra manual work.

You might be right, but I don’t know whether the W3C systems people
would be happy running build scripts on the hg server, given they are
quite complex – they would presumably want to review them to ensure they
don’t open any security holes – and will take up server CPU time.

> Just please say it's not perl-based :)

I love Perl, but I know Robin and I are in a minority there!

In the current build system, there is actually very little Perl – most
of the work is done in XSLT.  Jonathan has already translated the Perl
wrapper script that invokes the XSLT processor to Python.  (Python is
already a dependency, since Mercurial requires it.)  So we have a win
there in dropping Perl as a dependency.

> It would be nice if we had a more easy to use way to review the spec,
> something along the lines of http://www.reviewboard.org/.

That would be nice.

> Imposing a public review using a system like that before a change is
> merged to the actual main branch could also be a way to raise the
> quality. It's more work though.

I suspect it is only very slightly more work, especially with nice
review tools such as that one, or something like the hg extension
Jonathan mentioned.  Using tools to track review like this is going to
be easier to manage than having bespoke markup in the specification
itself to indicate whether a section has been reviewed yet and who it
was reviewed by.

As we all agree, we want to raise the bar higher for SVG 2.0.  RTC would
server that end better than CTR, I would think.

(As with all of these proposals, we will see in practice whether these
processes or too heavy or light, and can adjust them alter on to suit.)

-- 
Cameron McCormack ≝ http://mcc.id.au/

Received on Thursday, 24 March 2011 22:31:45 UTC